Green man could stay on longer for pedestrians in England
I don't actually think this is the proposal at all. In fact on most crossings 4 or 5 seconds is more than adequate (for alert people, those people too busy staring at their phones to cross the road deserve no help).
"What??" you all say.
Well, the thing is, the green man is an invitation to cross. It doesn't matter if it is 4 or 40 seconds. The problem is that most people think that the green man should get them all the way over the road. At most crossings on junctions now the green man is on the nearside - easier to see and also once you've set off across the road you can't see it, which removes the issue of people turning around and walking back if the green man went out whilst they were crossing (yup, really). But if someone arrives at the last second of the green man what is important is the clearance time after the green man goes out to get them over the road.
This has previously been calculated as distance divided by 1.2, and it seems they're proposing to make this 1 second for each meter, so increasing the clearance time.
In reality it will make little difference. On modern (ie in the last 20 years) crossings there are detectors that hold traffic until the crossing is clear, and if there is still someone on the crossing at the end of the clearance time there is an option to hold vehicles for an extra 2 seconds (yeah, no idea why this is a seperate parameter) so unless the crossing is over 10m (4 lanes) then you get 1second per metre anyway.
Paul