It's an interesting idea, it just won't work. Low powered red laser beams aren't visible, day or night. To have visible beams you have to have very powerful beams that are extremely dangerous to the eye. Lasers are just the wrong thing to use for this because kind of like electricity, if you can SEE it, it's pretty damned dangerous.

I love it!

pew pew pew, safe to cross. :D

People still have trouble understanding the fact that laser beams are only visible when they have something to reflect off of like smoke or water vapor... and even then they are difficult to see in direct daylight.

Depending on the color of the laser & how powerful it is, there are several lasers you can see in daylight without fog or enhancements. I build and own several of these, I am not sourcing my information

Pff, apart from the problem that lasers can't be seen unless they're hitting dust or something (by people with normal sight, let alone the blind), this does nothing to address the real problems.

There are two huge ones
1) Most vehicle drivers are ignorant (me included). Lasers aren't going to stop the idiots driving over and stopping on crossings. A LOT of us would probably welcome lasers that can damage cars and, ideally, chop cyclists up when they do something dumb (heck, that would help with overpopulation as well!)
2) Pedestrians would ignore it - the problem for them is that roads are not designed for them. They "jaywalk" because the crossings are in the wrong places, don't give enough time to cross, don't change fast enough. Lasers at crossings will simply make them avoid the (already inadequate) crossings even more.

On the bright side... frikkin lasers!

Lasers can not be seen except for when it hits a surface, is "dead on in yout eye " (now your blind) or when dust or mist enter it's path soooooooooooooo how would you see it ??????? as a do not cross line? Do you see kids using laser pointers as "light sabers"....NO (well except for really foggy nights..then it's light sabers or laser shoot out)

We have access to lasers that create bright and clear, visible beams during the day. The problem is, if anybody were to ever look into the emitter (for a laser of that power), even for a split second, that person would be permanently blind in that eye. Also, if anything were to be held in front of those beams (especially darker colored objects), they would be prone to a laser cutting (I'm no expert; the focal length of the laser beam may be adjustable enough to prevent this).

Just go to YouTube and search for something like "200mW laser burning stuff". Beams at that power are "just" visible during the daylight, and are still quite dangerous. Your local nightclub gets away with all it's laser effects through a combination of smoke and darkness; those lasers are relatively weak.

All easily rectified by putting sensors adjacent to the laser, which shuts off the beam when they are triggered.

You are correct except you want to search for a 2 watt laser on youtube, not a 200mw laser. A 2W laser search will probably bring you to one of my videos, lasers with this much output are completely visible in daylight

Actually, from what I have heard/read/watched, the lasers you see in videos are to a camera much much more visible than to the naked eye. I forget why but it's probably a frames per second thing. Oh that and aperture related nonsense. I don't know dick about cameras but this video can kind of explain it. Ignore the theatrics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

It's because many of those lasers produce a significant amount of infrared light, which the camera's CCDs can see but the eye cannot. Infrared light will still burn your retinas out. Very dangerous because infrared light doesn't trigger a blinnk response.

It would be far better if the laser disintegrated cars that ran red lights. Not the driver (or passengers) just the car, so that they'd end up sat in the middle of the road looking stupid.

That was gonna be my comment!

Certified: Dumb.

I think everyone is misunderstanding this concept. It is obvious that the designer actually intends for the laser to instantly vaporize any car or pedestrian that crosses the beam. well done well done.I myself would have used two sets of portals so all can cross at the same time without colliding but vaporizing violaters is a great way to do it too (i suppose)

all this laser thing discourages is the box area in the middle, and encourage J-walk and lets-hope-not...J-drives...

You know what would be really awesome? If you had lasers at intersections that could instantly burn messages into speeding cars' paint jobs. So when someone ran a red light, they'd have "I DRIVE LIKE AN ASSHOLE" written on their vehicle for all to see.

Possibly the best photoshop I've ever seen.

Kids who are at eye-level with the laser definitely won't look into the bright emitter. There's no chance whatsoever that their eyes will quickly dart over to the bright coloured light that never used to be there before. Nope. No blindness here.

Even if these lasers were visible, they would never connect to either side. There would always be one car blocking the crosswalk that would ruin it for every one.