Zebra, Pelican, Puffin and Toucan — The UK’s pedestrian crossings

If you’ve ever been to London, or any other part of the UK, then chances are you’ll have noticed that the British do things… differently.

They drive on the other side of the road, they use miles per hour instead of kilometers per hour, they overuse the word ‘Sorry’, etc. But for those of you who are eagle-eyed, you may have also noticed that pedestrian crossings in the UK are quite elaborate, unlike in the rest of mainland Europe or North America.

For starters, many of the pedestrian crossings have warning signs for pedestrians:

Source: https://www.reddrivingschool.com/learners/how-do-i-do-it/highway-code/rules-of-the-zebra-crossing/

However, this hardly captures the differences…

Types of pedestrian crossings

The UK has, in fact, 6 types of pedestrian crossings [1]. The main four are:

1. Zebra crossings (a standard pedestrian crossing with flashing amber lights)
2. Pelican crossings (PEdestrian LIght CONtrolled crossings)
3. Puffin crossings (Pedestrian User Friendly INtelligent crossings)
4. Toucan crossings (these are crossings for pedestrians and cyclists, smartly dubbed two can crossings).

The other two are the Equestrian (or Pegasus) and School Warden (controlled by ‘lollipop’ men and women) crossings. These aren’t as exciting as the others, so I’ve only included their photos down below:

Equestrian crossing (left) for horses, source: https://theorytest.org.uk/pedestrian-crossings/; School warden crossing (right) for children, source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-46514670

Zebra crossings:

These are the most striking pedestrian crossings in the UK. They are not operated by traffic lights, but instead have flashing amber lights to alert drivers.

A 3D zebra crossing, source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-47402269

In theory, drivers must stop when they see any pedestrian showing an intent to cross. This is likely the case in other countries too, but in the UK it seems to be treated in quite a ‘holy’ way, in that that (most) drivers religiously follow that rule. This is quite striking, because at other crossings where the right of way is unclear, drivers appear to have the intent of running pedestrians over.

Here is another (more fancy) version of the Zebra crossing lights in the City of London:

A ‘fancy’ Zebra crossing (I’ve mostly seen these in the City of London), source: https://www.arnoldclark.com/newsroom/3502-everything-you-need-to-know-about-pedestrian-crossings

Pelican crossings:

These are the first of many crossings that are operated by traffic lights.

They are standard pedestrian operated lights. These are probably the most common pedestrian crossings in the world, as you can find them all across Europe, the UK, the UAE and parts of the United States.

When a pedestrian presses the button, a ‘wait’ light is turned on. My thinking is that this triggers a mechanism to shorten the time that is already pre-set on the traffic light (presumably based on traffic). In practice, I found that pressing or not pressing made little to no difference.

In the UK, once the light for pedestrians turns green, an alarm is sound. There’s another feature that’s sometimes hard to notice.

That half conical / half cylindrical piece rotates when pedestrians have the right of way, and it’s designed to help blind people when crossing the road [2].

Puffin crossings:

Puffin crossings, like Pelicans, are operated by the pedestrian. However, there is one striking difference… these are fitted with sensors that detect when there are people who wish to cross the road [3]. This ensures that the light timer is controlled by pedestrian traffic.

A puffin crossing, source: https://www.arnoldclark.com/newsroom/3502-everything-you-need-to-know-about-pedestrian-crossings

There is another difference.

With Pelican crossings, the light signalling pedestrians to stop or go is across the road, meaning that pedestrians must turn to look at oncoming traffic.

Puffin crossings however are positioned such that they face oncoming traffic, and therefore, pedestrians will always be aware of any cars approaching.

It’s funny that there is actually a debate on whether these are safer or not for pedestrians, insofar as London decided to stop installing them in 2014 [4].

I unfortunately could not find a single one of these.

Toucan crossings:

Finally, we arrive at Toucan crossings. Once again, these are pedestrian operated, and they differ in that they also allow cyclists to use the crossing.

The schematic below shows this nicely:

Toucan crossing, source: https://theorytest.org.uk/pedestrian-crossings/

Other crossings…

Every country has it’s own quirks, and therefore you’ll find that pedestrian crossings will vary from country to country. Here are some other examples:

Yellow pedestrian crossings in Switzerland (left), source: https://www.newlyswissed.com/more-swiss-than-i-thought/; Pedestrian crossing in Munich with signs — many of them — (right), source: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/d4hnds/in_munich_germany_32_signs_at_one_crossing/

How about your country? Do you have different pedestrian crossings? If so, comment on the article so I can research them, and perhaps write an article on them ;)

References:

1. https://theorytest.org.uk/pedestrian-crossings/
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfYzJ1pRK3E&ab_channel=morthren
3. https://www.arnoldclark.com/newsroom/3502-everything-you-need-to-know-about-pedestrian-crossings
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffin_crossing

All images provided by author unless stated otherwise