Gunfire traffic signals?

RantWoman was out this morning going here and there. RantWoman needed to cross several streets.  RantWoman is SUPPOSED to be charmed that the streets she needed to cross all have spiffy audible pedestrian signals, a feature especially useful when intersections also come with things like left-turn signals and other features that sound like traffic moving but do not actually mean its safe to cross the street.

RantWoman is supposed to be charmed.

RantWoman is not charmed: some of the new audible signals sound to RantWoman too much like gunfire. Here is a KUOW story with an audio clip to illustrate.

http://kuow.org/post/seattle-s-crosswalk-chirps-being-killed-rapid-ticks

Yes, dear readers, you also read the story right: apparently there is an official government standard suggesting that signals that sound to RantWoman like gunfire are preferable to chirping. RantWoman received this info from an oofficial Seattle Dept of Transportation tweet about the news item.

Yesterday RantWoman's tweet streem included tidings from the Seattle police dpeartment of not one but TWO rolling gunfights. RantWoman counted on her other blog FOUR incidents in the last year where there has gunfire somewhere near where RantWoman travels frequently. This does not count joking with someone who moved out of rantWoman;'s 'hood because of too much gunfire near his house about "how will his family live without all that gunfire?"

More audio that sounds like gunfire would NOT be RantWoman's first choice for anything.

Sigh!

So now RantWoman is off to ask some other people she knows whether gunfire pedestrian signals bother them too and then MAYBE RantWoman can get back to #hackthecommute visions....


PS To the silver something or other that RantWoman did not hear at all until it honked and then California-stopped before a right on red onto Denny, you are VERY lucky RantWoman was too startled to invoke Ambassador Thwack's school of percussive pedagogy! But please HANG UP AND DRIVE or get over whatever else is getting in the way of you paying attention!