So I’ll be waiting to cross the street like the loser pedestrian I am, the light will change any minute.
Then you see me, you good Samaritan driver take pity on my looserliness and decide you’re going to stop and wave me through. However you fail to notice several facts.
1.You are one lane out of four, two going in the opposite direction which are all packed with fast moving vehicles.
2.I was waiting for the light which will change any moment, when all lanes of traffic will cease movement and I will be able to cross.
3.You’re pissing off everyone behind you.
4.I’m not going to take you up on your favor and then play fucking Frogger in the other three lanes.
So I’ll refuse, you won’t take no for an answer and keep your vehicle planted and keep waving assuming I must be really slow while everyone behind you is getting angrier and shouting abuse. When you finally accept I’m not going you’ll finally drive off also angry and shouting abuse at me, how dare I not take your generous pass.
Seriously do people forget their lane is not the only lane or something?
I have heard of situations where a driver, who has the right-of-way, stops and “waves” you through, in an attempt to be “gracious.” When you, the sucker, takes up the offer, the Waver proceeds into the intersection, causing an accident. When the police come to investigate, Mr. Waver had the right-of-way, so you get cited for a violation, and the Waver collects on your insurance.
He’s talking about when two cars are involved. I haven’t heard of that happening though I’m sure it has. Most of the time it’s just a misguided attempt at being “nice”, unfortunately it’s really fucking stupid because when you be “nice” by not following the road rules no one around you knows what you are going to do next.
This is so common in New England, there is no right of way any more, everybody is waving everybody through, then everybody expects you to wave them through, so everybody stops waiting to figure out what everybody else is going to do. It is a stupid mess.
There are a couple pedestrian crossings (without lights) that I cross nearly every day. If there is only light traffic I will try to quickly cross so that the oncoming cars don’t have to slow down, or deliberately dawdle so that they can zip past before I get there. Most people understand what is going on but some percentage stop anyway. I acknowledge their politeness with a nod while thinking,“idiot!”
I was a pedestrian at a 4-way-intersection where all but one way had stop signs; the direction without a stop sign was crossing a railroad track that parallels the cross-street so you just want them to keep moving. I was waiting for a car coming from that direction to head straight through the intersection. Instead, the driver stopped in the middle of the freaking intersection to wave me across! I stepped back with a horrified look and did the “no way” hand motion, and fortunately she took the hint and kept going.
And yeah, one notable “wave the other car in” move that I saw involved a car trying to cross two lanes of traffic to turn left into a third. She had the two from the left (in stopped traffic, so the cars ahead of them weren’t moving either) waving her through, but unfortunately she couldn’t see (around the stopped cars) that traffic was still coming from the right in the lane she was trying to turn into. Bam, T-boned.
I hate when drivers are needlessly courteous as well. What happens more often to me than the blatantly dangerous situation in the OP is the merely slightly dangerous situation where a car will be on a course to turn in front of me, without any cars to messy up the situation. But the car stops way before I get to the intersection, forcing me to walk in front of it. I’d prefer to not walk in front of a deadly weapon, all else being equal, thank you very much. It sometimes is 10 seconds or more before I get to the point where the car would have been. If these people are so bad at physical math, maybe they shouldn’t be on the road.
I used to live in rural New Brunswick and this happened regularly and it was infuriating. As a pedestrian, if you came to a corner cars would regularly stop for you and wave you on, totally fucking oblivious to the other cars in the lane beyond racing merrily along. And then if you made expansive hand gestures to say “No, no, I’d prefer not to spatter my brains on the pavement in service of your inflated ego,” they would look all huffy and put-out.
The worst was when hiking–there are quite a lot of cross-country skiing and ATV and hiking trails that cross provincial highways at some point, and the rule is: the person on foot waits. For as long as it is necessary to wait. That’s just…the price you pay for hiking that trail. But every once in a while you’ll see some absolute numbnut who would STOP on a HIGHWAY to let a freaked-out hiker cross the road, nearly causing a pileup of drivers and one seriously panicked hiker to all lose their minds.
The worst. The best thing you can do as a driver is be predictable.
For some reason this reminds me if those people who like to hold the door open for you when your still like 30 yards away. Thus forcing you to do a sprint for the rest of the way and then thanking the douche bag for the privilege.
You know. We have the strange buttons on the corners where pedestrian traffic crosses the vehicle traffic. The buttons operate s system that actually stops traffic so the pedestrian can waddle across the street.
The trouble here is too many vehicles don’t seem to be equipped with a set of brakes-if the car in front stops(or even just slows down sometimes) the car behind will maintain speed and just swerve around without caring if there was a reason for the action that soooo inconvenienced them. If a car stops to let me cross and there is another vehicle behind them, I always refuse.
I live in a college town and at least one person is killed each year here because of this. Sometimes it is a jay-walker, but it happens at intersections, too (which, I guess is still jay-walking when the pedestrian is walking against the light).
I ride a motorcycle around town a lot, so perhaps I notice this stuff more than most drivers since it is obvious others don’t see it. I honestly believe that two years of motorcycle riding should be a required to get a driver’s license. One way or another, it would make those with a license better drivers.
My “favorite” around here is the type of idiot (and this happens rather frequently) who pull out into an intersection, realize they don’t have the right-of-way and then stop. Stop? That’s the WORST thing you can do. Either go on thru, or back up if you can, but why the fuck would you stop? Do you prefer that I hit you dead on instead of just nicking your rear end or something.
At pedestrian crossings without lights, cars are supposed to stop if someone is waiting to cross. They can get a ticket for not doing so. And you’re mad if they do stop? I guess that’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t kind of situation for the cars.
As each municipality writes and enforces it’s own traffic laws, I’m not going to research and cite multiple cities’ laws on this. However, most local laws do say that pedestrians in a crosswalk have the right of way over vehicles.
