Flemish Minister for Mobility Lydia Peeters launched a campaign for people to push the buttons at traffic lights with their elbows, and not with their hands or fingers.
At the 1,600 intersections on Flemish regional roads with traffic lights managed by the Agency for Roads and Traffic (AWV), 4,500 push buttons for pedestrians or cyclists to influence the traffic light regulation can be found.
All these buttons will now receive a sticker that tells people to press the buttons with their elbow instead of their bare hands, to stop the further spread of the new coronavirus (Covid-19). The stickers will also be made available to local authorities, so they can introduce them at traffic lights under their competence.
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"Pressing a button at a traffic light is such a habitual act, sometimes we do not even think about it. That is exactly why we want to use this sticker: to remind people not to touch the control buttons with their bare hands but with their elbows, for example," said Peeters.
"For certain buttons, it will be a little more difficult to do this, but even then, the stickers will prove their usefulness as they will make the pedestrian think not to do this with his bare hands," she added.
Credit: Lydia Peeters/AWV
The stickers are part of a broader package of measures relating to the exit strategy for 'sustainable mobility'. They will appear over the course of next week, before the schools will likely reopen on 15 or 18 May in Phase 2 of Belgium's exit strategy out of lockdown, when certain pupils and their parents will be on the streets again going to and from school.
Maïthé Chini
The Brussels Times
