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. Simply this: The switching is done automatically from a distance (even miles!) at a central switchboard.
There are many other marvels about this system, such as electrical counting devices to decide how long each light burns for best handling of the traffic, special lights for controlling left turns or to accommodate people on foot... but the truly great marvel is this: People obey these lights.
Think about it. With no policemen anywhere around people obey these blind and dumb bits of machinery as. if they were policemen.
Are people here so sheeplike and peaceful that they can be controlled this easily? No. I wondered about it and found some statistics in the library. This world has a higher rate of violent crime than does the world in which I was born. Caused by these strange lights? I don't think so. I think that the people here, although disposed to violence against each other, accept obeying traffic lights as a logical thing to do. Perhaps.
As may be, it is passing strange.
Another conspicuous difference in technology lies in air traffic. Not the decent, cleanly, safe, and silent dirigible airships of my home world - No, no! These are more like the aeroplanos of the Mexicano world in which Margrethe and I sweated out our indentures before the great quake that destroyed Mazatlбn. But they are so much bigger, faster, noisier and fly so much higher than the aeroplanos we knew that they are almost another breed - or are indeed another breed, perhaps, as they are called 'jet planes'
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