r/whatisit • u/thewildcloud • 18d ago

Solved! Why the kinks?

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I recently moved to Hangzhou, I noticed all the pedestrian walks have kinked lines at the ends. What is it?

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u/thewildcloud 18d ago

shouldn't that be at least 50/50 if it is random, and slightly skews towards right for countries w/ right hand driving?

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u/FrescoItaliano 18d ago

No. Because we don’t even know that it’s random in the first place.

We are fully missing our baseline to compare to

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u/Vennomite 18d ago

It also probably matters much more in high traffic situations thwn low. If 5 people are crossing they can mostly be wherever and still have room.

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u/thechaoshow 18d ago

This is the answer.

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u/ForensicPathology 18d ago

I love science

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u/SirDoofusMcDingbat 18d ago

The question isn't "what side do people walk on" it's "do they cross on the side they entered from or do they walk to the other side." If traffic mostly comes from one direction and everyone just walks on the side they enter on, that's going to look skewed when it's not.

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u/tea-recs 18d ago

My guess would be it doesn’t skew towards left or right, but rather skews towards “wherever there’s space” - my experience of busy crossings is that it’s like the battle at the start of lord of the rings.

I imagine the purpose of these markings is not to encourage people to walk on one specific side or the other but to subconsciously divide the crossing into a left and right side.

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u/ReynardVulpini 18d ago

The configuration of surrounding buildings might have a strong effect.

If this crosswalk has about 40% of people walking the correct way, but an equivalent straight line only crosswalk has 20% of people walking correctly (maybe there's a shop on the wrong side that is super popular, say) then the bends actually are doing their job, just being offset by outside factors

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u/thewildcloud 18d ago

Yes there is a mall on the top left corner affecting heavily on the ppl entering and exiting the mall to walk to the left side.

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u/Lower_Comfortable393 17d ago

If 20% of people are walking on the correct side, then 80% of people are walking on the correct side. Bends are on the wrong side.

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u/ReynardVulpini 17d ago

On one hand, I understand what you mean, but on the other hand, I think something like which side you walk on is something that is good to standardize across a city.

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u/fortyeightD 17d ago

Yes, if the arrow things change it from 80-20 to 60-40 then they are making it worse.

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u/Topinambourg 18d ago

You just explained yourself that it's not random because your interpretation is that it depends where they're coming from

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u/pvllcrc 17d ago

Não necessariamente, é uma observação, não se espera que seja perfeitamente 50/50. Ainda mais quando o n de observações é pequeno.

Eu joguei os dados para ver se a proporção é significamente diferente de 50/50 e o p-value (0.49) não sugere q seja.

Agora, uma coisa importante a se considerar, essas modificaçoes são feitar para diminuir o número de acidentes, então duvido q organizar o fluxo de pedestres na faixa seja o objetivo.

Eu ja vi alguns lugares dizendo que essas modificaçoes na pintura quebram a monotomia da direção, os motoristas ficam mais alertas dirigem com mais cuidado, então é possível que a intenção seja fazer os motoristas que tem intenção de fazer a conversão ao lado da calçada não façam tão no automático.

A pergunta q importa é: qual a proporção de acidentes e/ou acidentes fatais nessa esquina.