It's dangerous to carry a red flag here in Madison.

These mellower approaches to mediating between cars and pedestrians really don't work too well:

Susan Elias never saw the car coming. And the driver never saw her, even though she was holding a red flag....

“What routinely happens, and what is really scary, is that a car will stop,” Sally Lehner said at the meeting, according to a report in the neighborhood news service Madison Commons. “Someone will be really nice and wave 'go ahead.' And then another commuter will come up behind, have no idea that car is stopping because they're letting me go, and nearly hit us.”...

With the population on the city's west side expanding, causing more and more drivers to look for fast routes from the downtown, [Madison Police Capt. Joe] Balles says, the traffic pressure on Monroe Street isn't likely to abate.

“It's got to go beyond red flags. It's got to go beyond enforcement,” he says. “We've got to really start modifying the environment and make it more pedestrian-friendly down there.”

Modifying the environment? How about stop signs, traffic lights, and expensive tickets for violators? Sorry to be old fashioned, but I don't want to pay for a lot of speed humps and islands. I want to make money. Get out there and ticket drivers. And lose that red flag program. It's a dangerous illusion of safety.

(Personally, I have used the red flags to point at evil drivers in an uncivil effort to shame them for driving through where I'm supposed to have the right of way, but it just cranks up pointless inner anger.)