A pedestrian crossing audio device is found that keeps repeating 'Please change your password'

by Erica Fischer

As you walk around the streets, you'll hear the sound of an acoustic signal that chimes and voices tell visually impaired people that the pedestrian crossing signal has turned blue. Instead of telling you that you can safely cross the pedestrian crossing, a pedestrian crossing audio device in the United States was caught asking you to change your password.

The walk signs in Crystal City, VA are just repeating “Change Password” | Hacker News
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30675727

Joey Politano, an economist based in Washington, DC, the capital of the United States, told Twitter on March 14, 2022, 'Pedestrian signs in Crystal City, Virginia tell us when it's safe to cross the road. Instead of giving me, I repeat 'Please change your password (CHANGE PASSWORD)'. It seems that something is terribly strange. ' When you play the video attached to the tweet, you can certainly hear the audio device on the road saying 'Please change your password' in the synthetic voice.

Instead of telling you when it's safe to cross the street, the walk signs in Crystal City, VA are just repeating 'CHANGE PASSWORD'.

Something's gone terribly wrong here. Pic.twitter.com/W5h8OjBXUu

— Joey Politano (@JosephPolitano) March 13, 2022

Mr. Politano's tweets have attracted attention with 551 retweets, 154 quoted tweets, and 2478 likes at the time of writing the article. There are some retweets that make the machine make strange sounds, but Politano points out that 'in fact, it's a serious accessibility problem for the visually impaired.' Did.

This is actually a serious accessibility issue for people with visual impairments.

— Joey Politano (@JosephPolitano) March 13, 2022

According to programmer Matthew Martin, who retweeted Politano, this was due to the fact that the device's default password was installed unchanged. Martin advised, 'If you have time, make a complaint where you are managing traffic lights in your area.'

pretty common phenomenon, these devices ship with a default password and if the installers don't change it, it will say 'Change password' until someone does. If you have the time you should complain to the people who run the traffic signals in your area https://t.co/I0bM8qADLh pic.twitter.com/YEWOgrHMUg

— Matthew Martin (@hyperplanes) March 14, 2022

A thread on the social news site Hacker News that featured this tweet said, 'It seems that speakers who say nothing but' beep 'and' walk 'and will never say are getting voice messages from the Internet. This is certainly a problem, as the impressions such as 'It's a surprise' and 'Crystal City has an overwhelmingly high proportion of visually impaired people compared to other cities' from people who actually lived in Crystal City. 'Let's do it,' a dangerous opinion was written.