I was germ aware before germ phobia was cool.

Now that everyone is paying attention, let’s stop insisting the pedestrians push these awful, disgusting  buttons every time we want to safely and legally cross the street.

Seriously. Stop.

We have the technology to do otherwise.

The pedestrian signal at Market and Talcott is 24/7/365. At Main and Pearl, it’s automatic during first shift hours, Monday through Friday. We know such futuristic accomplishments are possible, even in Hartford. If we can manage it for those intersections, why not all of them?

It’s not realistic to sanitize each of these, citywide, and we know that the devices do not get cleaned anyway. One near Bushnell Park was smeared with poop last year, and it stayed that way for months. Attaching hand sanitizer bottles to every beg button is equally unrealistic, and those would get stolen in no time.

We could talk about restoring simple human dignity when it comes to using the roads, but if it takes a pandemic to draw attention to these degrading beg buttons, then so be it.