Pelican signals to facilitate pedestrians to cross roads safely

First thing, I would like to say that ‘Everyone is a pedestrian because everyone does walk as part of their means of getting around, no matter which mode of transportation they happen to be engaging in’.

In today’s world, we all have to be somewhere at specific times, therefore the road traffic is growing rapidly on regular basis and causing increase in fatal road accidents. So to face up, Traffic Signals are introduced as the solution to all accidents and traffic control.

Most of times it happened to see that Pedestrians are forced to wait endlessly at busy junction to cross the road and they take the risk to cross the road and ‘yes’ that risk can convert into an accident and sometimes it happens. But no worry, a tool called “Pelican Signal” is here to help us to overcome these situations. Though the Pelican Signals have been installed at various crossings in Delhi a little more than 3 years now, but public is yet to know that such a concept exits.

Pelican (Pedestrian Light Controlled Crossing) signal is a definitive light controlled crossing signal that features a set of traffic lights (Green Man & Red Man Signal) with a push button, operated by pedestrian for crossing. The controls to operate the light signals are on the pedestrian’s corner while the light signal for crossing is on the other side of the road. So if 4/2 wheelers are taking too much time at the signal, the pedestrians can press the button at the signal to cross the lane. When you want to cross, push the button to activate Pelican and if, Red Man signal appear on the other side of the road, do not cross and wait for the Green Man Signal to appear, but if, green signal begins to flash then you should not cross if you have already started you should have time to finish crossing safely. At some places audible Pelican with warning sounds are installed for visually impaired to safely cross the road without assistance.

So obviously, it would reduce the ‘wait time’ that pedestrian have to spare for crossing the road and once people will know the usage of Pelican there will be no question of chaos or accidents. We just need to spread awareness about it.

The Pelican Signals have been installed at more than 46 crossings in Delhi including Shanti Van, India Gate and Ashram Chowk. And I think, it is very important step taken by Delhi Traffic Police as the system had considerably reduced the accident toll of pedestrians in countries like US and UK among others.