A number of weeks in the past, a person walked into the center of the highway in Vancouver, Canada, waving a brick within the air. Visitors security advocates have been proper there — however they didn’t name the police or in any other case intervene. They did, nevertheless, document the incident after which shared it on Twitter (or “X”). It was, in any case, a matter of public security.
However not in the way in which you assume. The brick-waving man wasn’t a menace, at the least, not by design. He was a possible sufferer trying to shield himself. And the advocates knew this — as a result of they gave him the brick.
They usually have been solely half joking.
In 2000, Salt Lake Metropolis, Utah, put in the primary identified set of one thing referred to as “pedestrian crossing flags” in a handful of crosswalks all through the town. The concept, as seen in this image (from Minnesota) is easy. On both facet of the crosswalk is a bucket crammed with brightly-colored (usually orange or yellow) flags. If you need to cross the road, you’re taking a flag out of the bucket and carry it with you, perhaps waving it round a bit. This helps vehicles see you, significantly from a distance, as the brilliant orange contrasts with the highway.
It’s a good suggestion but it surely has some flaws. For instance, waving a flag is type of boring and considerably embarrassing — who desires to stroll throughout the road waving a brilliant orange or yellow flag?
So simply earlier than April 1, 2024 — and take note of that date — a gaggle referred to as Imaginative and prescient Zero Vancouver, determined to put in the same bin subsequent to a crosswalk on the intersection of Anderson Road, a busy highway, and Island Park Stroll, a footpath, as seen on the prime (by way of Google Maps Road View.) It’s a harmful intersection; in line with CBC Information, “there have been 10 crashes alone on the intersection of Anderson Road and Island Park Stroll, which types a part of the seawall, between 2018 and 2022. 5 of them resulted in an damage or fatality.”
Right here’s an image of what they created:
These aren’t flags. They’re bricks. Should you can’t learn the signal, it says “Be Seen” in all capital letters, adopted by “Seize a Brick!” in smaller caps under. Then, the signal lists 4 one-word directions: Seize, Look, Wave, Cross — the identical primary concept behind pedestrian crossing flags. Bricks, after all, can be utilized by pedestrians to struggle again towards reckless drivers (relying on how good your purpose is), and as VZV volunteer Lucy Maloney instructed CBC Vancouver, the thought was “to impress debate and thought concerning the energy imbalance between two-ton motor automobiles and [pedestrians].” However don’t fear about an offended individual hurling a brick at a automotive — those offered by VZV are made of froth, and couldn’t do quite a lot of injury past startling a driver.
Whereas it began off as an April Idiot’s joke, the thought earned a great quantity of consideration on Twitter, with VZV’s video garnering greater than 1,000,000 views, upsetting a dialog round whether or not this needs to be a everlasting set up. However it’s unlikely that will probably be and the buckets of bricks are seemingly already gone. VZV is a citizen motion group that isn’t a part of the Vancouver authorities, and the federal government most likely isn’t a fan of the thought. As one native lawyer famous on TikTok, “in case you are to stroll throughout the road waving a brick at a automotive to threaten that you just’re going to [do harm to the car or drivers],” that’s fairly clearly a criminal offense.
Bonus truth: For older members of our inhabitants, crossing the road might be significantly tough, because it takes longer than typical whenever you stroll extra slowly. For some, even crossing at an intersection with a Stroll/Don’t Stroll signal isn’t an sufficient answer, because the time to cross isn’t lengthy sufficient for them to soundly make the journey. Bricks aren’t an excellent answer, however RFID-enabled ID playing cards could also be. In Singapore, older residents can “faucet their [ID cards] on the reader mounted above the usual push-button on the visitors mild pole to increase [the crossing] time by between 3 and 13 seconds, relying on the width of the crossings,” in line with the Singapore Land Transporation Authority’s web site.
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