The BBC website recently revealed a secret little button on a Pedestrian Crossing box. It can be found on most of the push button boxes in most parts of the country and it can actually save lives.

What is it?

The button is the shape of a cone and is located underneath the pedestrian crossing. You would not know it was there – unless you read this article of course.

When the crossing is working normally and the green man lights up to tell traffic to stop and allow pedestrians to cross, this little cone starts to spin.

S0 WTF is it for?

The cone is there for people who can’t see the lights. People who are visually impaired or blind for example. When they feel it spin, they know it is time to cross.

For a blind person, this is really useful if the road is loud and busy and there are no passers-by to ask.

It is also really useful on crossings in quieter areas where the crossing doesn’t make a beeping noise. This applies in a quiet area where two crossings are very close together. They will not beep as this could be really confusing. Better to use the cone.

How do people use it?

A blind man interviewed by the BBC said of the spinning mechanism: “An important point to make is that I wait for the cone to rotate but combine the information that it gives me with listening to the traffic on the road in front of me. You can hear whether they’re changing gear or slowing down.

“The cone isn’t telling you it’s safe to cross, it’s telling you the light is on. For instance, cyclists like whizzing through crossings sometimes, even though they shouldn’t.”

Who invented them?

The cones were actually invented by Nottingham University back in the 1980s. It wasn’t until 1989 that they began to appear on our streets. They are added to the boxes post manufacture by a company called Radix who hassold about 10,000 units per year since 1995.

Share this info with your friends. Could come in handy and is a neat trick to show them!