We have a zebra stripes painted what I assume is intentionally to look like a speed bump. Similar idea but way less dramatic than this. The thing is a few weeks after it was painted not only do I know it is fake I don’t even see the illusion any more.
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No ‘Abbey Road’ versions?? Boingboing, I am Disappointed.
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What would it look like to a self driving car? Their visual systems are notoriously dissimilar to human perceptions (seeing the broad side of a semi as “sky” for example).
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And what does it look like to a driver approaching from the other direction?
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Looks like a terrible and dangerous idea to me - sure to cause rear-enders.
Why not train pedestrians to, oh I dunno, LOOK before they cross the road?
• local drivers will drive through at normal speed
• out-of-towners will get confused, slow down, have a laugh
• self-driving cars will come to a screeching halt, killing all passengers inside
• Wile E Coyote will slam into the wall on which a fake landscape is painted
• Road Runner will pass through the wall as if the illusion is reality
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That was my thought when the article mentioned it’s fun for the cross-walkers. Aren’t these illusions only visible from a specific angle, and completely non-sensible from most every other angle?
Count me out, though. I’m having a hard enough time with the new cross-walk and extra lane markings for bike lanes and such. Very visually distracting to me. But I expect I’ll get used to it.
Before the Bike Mafia excoriates me for hating the bike lane markings, let me state I am all for bike lanes. Bikes are cool! I’m just old enough that my visual processing must be slowing down.
Now that would be a good use for this illusion. Paint the bike lane to look like a curb.
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Not only does the innovative design give foot-travelers the feeling of walking on air…
Oh boy… hyperbolize much? It should go without saying that foot travellers using the crosswalk will experience neither the visual aspects of the piece from a first-hand perspective, nor the feeling of walking on air.
This illusion is purely for the limited visual benefit of drivers (and numerous instagrammers, no doubt) approaching this intersection from the northwest.
On a side note, I love that with only the name of the town and a single word found in one of the photos I was able to find the actual location on Google Maps and stand at the very spot (albeit prior to the new paintwork).
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Also surely it only works on one way streets, if you come from the other direction, then you dont see it?
The Council I work for installed one of these. We picked a one-way street. For peds approaching they look like a regular zebra crossing, with a bit of random grey paint out the side.
Typically you would install one of these where:
- you’ve already got a zebra crossing (where pedestrians have the right of way) and lots of pedestrian activity
- you want cars to be travelling slowly (so rear enders shouldn’t be an issue); and
- issues with cars failing to give way to pedestrians and causing accidents.
The issues above aren’t pedestrians not looking - they’re cars not complying with the road rules. This is a low cost way to help address that.
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The top photo for this article shows the crossing my Council installed - Canterbury Bankstown Council sets sights on three-dimensional crossings to improve road safety - ABC News (if anyone is interested). It’s not yet on Google Maps.
Unfortunately, this was installed in what is pretty much a supermarket car park - so whilst vehicle movements were slow - there are a lot of them. I was there recently and only a year or so after it was initially painted it’s faded a lot now and much less illusion-y.
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If you do approach it the wrong way it looks like pedestrians are being sucked into the underworld. So yeah, best to do them on one-way streets.
Rolf, the problem with forced perspective is it only works one way.
Came to say something similar. I also commented on that other boingboing post about the professor who’s door had a photo of the inside of his office. A lot of these type of effects look amazing when photographed in 2D and shown on a 2D website on a 2D mobile device. Seeing it in real life with 3 dimensional vision and being able to move around it in 3 dimensions quickly gives away the illusion. One of the worst examples of that is these “3D” lamps that look amazing in a photo but are totally flat in real life:
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So, back to my question … what DOES it look like from the other side, to a driver coming the other way? Any pics? I’m intrigued about this. Anyone found a pic of that?
(Yeah, I know yours is in a one-way street, but the question is still valid.)
My first thought was “neat idea”. My second was “they got the shadows wrong” unless there is a powerful spotlight floating not too far above the “bars”.
I’ve nearly gotten hit at a crosswalk where the light above the road was fully red and the crossing light said to walk. I looked both ways before crossing but the car that drove around another car that had stopped before the crosswalk (while the stop light was red) didn’t care.
Granted, in that situation an illusion that looks like bars above the crosswalk wouldn’t help. But pedestrians can do everything right (wait for the crossing light, look both ways) and still get hit. I didn’t, but if my reflexes were faster I could have reached out and slapped the car (or scratched it with the umbrella I was carrying.)
These are a bad idea and have been found to cause drivers to swerve to avoid “obstacles” in the road:
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Maybe the city can hire people to dress up as scary clowns, and send them to randomly jump out at cars on the freeway.
The only possible effect of this would be drivers operating their vehicles more calmly, slowly, and attentively, ever-watchful for helpful “Safety Surprises”.
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