The next time you see a crosswalk button, don’t press it.
If you try that in the Seattle area you’ll be standing around until either someone else presses it or a car comes up and triggers the light to turn for your direction of travel. Timed intersections that turn for pedestrians anyway don’t have buttons. When there’s a crosswalk button here, it actually does something.
And yes, I have “done experiments” to prove this.
