My wife and I are a mixed-race couple and once,when we were dating, we were walking at the end of the day and she said, “Too many stares.”  I let go of her hand and gave her some room.  Then I realized, she had said, “Stairs.”

In our part of Seoul, there were crosswalks but there were also underpasses and pedestrian bridges.  Quite often, at the sidewalks, the crossing period was much less than the respective green light for automobiles.

I am reminded of all that in hearing a suburb of Buffalo will supply flags for pedestrians to wave while crossing the streets.

Starting around June 14, the village will place buckets containing small colored flags at three Main Street crosswalks that pedestrians will be encouraged to wave to alert approaching vehicles they want to cross.

…

Statistics do not indicate a problem with vehicle crashes involving pedestrians in East Aurora, but officials don’t want to wait until there is.

“It’ll be great to be out in front on this with crosswalk safety, and it’ll hopefully spread to other communities,” Village Trustee Libby Weberg said. “We’ll see how things go and how effective it seems to be.”

…

But just as East Aurora is prepares for a trial run of the flags, Hudson Falls is leaning toward phasing them out. Police Chief Randy Diamond said the program has not helped reduce car-pedestrian accidents…

I love that the city officials don’t see a problem with current accidents stats but also want to see if the flags will be effective.  I wonder how they’ll do that.

hat-tip to Tom Vanderbilt.