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wiley207
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Looking at the library of segments Sesame Street had over the years, I remember how they would teach about "DON'T WALK" and "WALK," as seen in these...
But times have changed, and this includes the pedestrian crossing signals. Many of them across the country were upgraded, so now they use the symbols (orange hand and white walking body) in place of the traditional words (this typically happens when traffic lights are upgraded from incandescent bulbs to L.E.D.s). Go to just about any major city, and you'll find these newer ones almost everywhere. New York City, where the show is taped and takes place, wasn't immune to this either. Prior to 2000-2001, they were all like this, as seen in that last video:
But like many cities, to save on electricity and make things more accessible for non-English speakers or the illiterate, they replaced all of them with L.E.D. pedestrian signals that use the symbols. As a result, many of them now look something like this:
...and some are like THIS:
So what I'm trying to say is, I think Sesame Street really needs to start doing new segments about those modern pedestrian crossing signals, explaining what the symbols mean. Because they're so common everywhere in America nowadays, this would make sense (my hometown installed most of their non-worded symbols at many intersections in September-October 2003 when they upgraded most of their traffic light equipment to L.E.D.s, and one intersection got countdown signals almost two years ago, and more are presumably on the way.)
Plus, maybe a segment about the countdown pedestrian signals would be a good idea to incorporate the Count into something
Any comments/opinions?
But times have changed, and this includes the pedestrian crossing signals. Many of them across the country were upgraded, so now they use the symbols (orange hand and white walking body) in place of the traditional words (this typically happens when traffic lights are upgraded from incandescent bulbs to L.E.D.s). Go to just about any major city, and you'll find these newer ones almost everywhere. New York City, where the show is taped and takes place, wasn't immune to this either. Prior to 2000-2001, they were all like this, as seen in that last video:
But like many cities, to save on electricity and make things more accessible for non-English speakers or the illiterate, they replaced all of them with L.E.D. pedestrian signals that use the symbols. As a result, many of them now look something like this:
...and some are like THIS:
So what I'm trying to say is, I think Sesame Street really needs to start doing new segments about those modern pedestrian crossing signals, explaining what the symbols mean. Because they're so common everywhere in America nowadays, this would make sense (my hometown installed most of their non-worded symbols at many intersections in September-October 2003 when they upgraded most of their traffic light equipment to L.E.D.s, and one intersection got countdown signals almost two years ago, and more are presumably on the way.)
Plus, maybe a segment about the countdown pedestrian signals would be a good idea to incorporate the Count into something
Any comments/opinions?