A senior engineer at Linconshire Road Safety Partnership has given the nonsense justification for changing the signs as telling people when to cross the road safely without explaining why changing the word "man" to "figure" will make crossing the road safer.
In fact, if a green man walking and a red man standing still are too complicated for the uneducated masses to understand that a sign is actually necessary as Lincolnshire Road Safety Partnership seems to think, surely this change could possibly make it less safe to cross the road. What's easier for a child or barely literate person to read? "Man" or "figure"? How about someone who doesn't speak English as a first language? I know the word for "man" in 5 or 6 foreign languages, I don't know the word "figure" in any.
This is nothing to do with road safety, it's a hand wringing liberal's perception of what is and isn't offensive regardless of whether the "wronged" section of society actually has a problem with it or not.