It’s a complex situation and makes me really wish there weren’t so many places where big 2000 pound pieces of metal and squishy humans share the same space.
I once was driving on a street that had right-of-way, approaching an intresection where the cross street had the stop signs – my street did not. Another driver rolled up to the stop sign on my right and stopped. When I proceeded through the intersection without stopping, however, he pulled out suddenly, screaming with rage and pointing at the non-existent stop sign he imagined I’d just flouted.
Apparently he had assumed it was a four-way stop and it REALLY pissed him off that I “ran” the stop sign instead of stopping for him.
Hint: only actual road signs apply.
Wait, so you just stop in the middle of the crosswalk? Or do you go back to where you came from?
No need, when I handled auto liability claim investigations this happened far too often. One of many staged accident fraud scenarios we see far too many of in NJ in particular. Often there isn’t sufficient evidence to prove fraud so the claims get paid. But the industry tracks those questionable claims CLOSELY and if you make a habit of it, you will get caught eventually.
Happens to me often. I live on a residential street that crosses a busier street in the middle of an S turn. It’s very hard to get out there sometimes. In the morning people are coming to the busy street from the opposite direction. They have the right of way as they are (usually) turning with traffic. There’s a break in traffic on the busy street and instead of just going, they wait on me because I was at the intersection first. While we decide who’s going to go…our break in traffic ends and I beat my head against the steering wheel and curse.
If they just took thier right of way as soon as we got a break it would be much better.
Their damn politeness is teaching me to be much more aggressive. As soon as I see them start to slow down, I cut them off just to avoid the annoying “You first!” “No, I insist” nonsense. I don’t even wait to be waved through because they are so predictable.
This is exactly why, when I was still a pedestrian (I went 15 years — as an adult — without a driver’s license), I just got in the habit of standing well back from the curb when I was waiting to cross the street. Some specific reasons why:
• For a while, my walk to and from work required me to cross a bridge’s on-ramp. This was a cloverleaf ramp that people driving down my town’s main street would take to get on the bridge to cross the river. Being an on-ramp, there were no traffic signals or marked crosswalk. From my preferred crossing point, I had a clear view of oncoming traffic and I would scan the oncoming cars to pick the best time to cross. I was happy to wait for a safe spot; I wasn’t in a hurry, and I don’t like to inconvenience other people. I finally started waiting about 10 feet back from the curb so I’d look like I was just loafing instead of waiting to cross, after about the third instance of somebody stopping for me and holding up a big, long line of cars
• Similar to the OP, I was once on the curb at a marked crosswalk, waiting to cross a 3-lane, one-way street. I had a “DON’T WALK” signal, because the cars had green lights. An idiot driver in the nearest lane literally stopped right in the middle of the intersection and waved for me to cross, apparently oblivious to the onrushing traffic in the other two lanes and the horns blowing behind him.
• I once exited a shop downtown, on our main street, whose front door happened to be almost directly in line with the middle-of-the-block crosswalk. My bicycle was chained to a lamp post near the crosswalk. I unlocked my bicycle, then spent some time placing my purchase into my backpack, putting on my helmet and getting it adjusted … only to look up and find that a woman had stopped her car (and everybody else behind her) and was waving me across. And because she was stopped at the crosswalk, the cars coming from the other direction stopped. So now traffic is stopped in both directions, and these drivers are ignoring my attempts to wave them on. It was stupid because I had no intention of crossing the street! Idiots.
Such laws are more likely state-wide in each state, rather than each municipality. In California (and I suspect this is similar elsewhere), a pedestrian already in the street has right-of-way. I don’t know of a law that says cars must stop for pedestrians while the pedestrian is still on the curb or sidewalk.
I went to university in Montreal in 1988. First time I had lived away from home in northern Ontario. First time I learned that jaywalking was safer than crossing with the lights. Seriously scary traffic there in Montreal.
Of course, Vancouver is also bad. In a totally different way.
been in that very situation, only the who blindly drove thru two lanes of stopped cars hit the one in the opposite traffic lane slamming into me, causing to go sideways and get tboned, then hit someone else from I don’t know where…all ending a 4 car pile up and the best car I ever had totaled and me having to climb out through the sunroof with a major concussion and a dislocated shoulder. one of the cars was smoking and rhey were afraid to take the time to cut me out.
by law (at least where I live) in that situation pedestrian legally has right of way, but that (and stopping for school buses) are the two most common missed questions on a drivers test..
On the “blindly merge and get hit by incoming lanes” tip, parts of East Colonial regularly get backed up during rush hour, and one place in particular had so many incidents of cars crossing 3 lanes of backed up traffic where there was a spot only to get hit when they were crossing the fourth, non-backed-up lane (a turning lane) that the government put up a sign with a graphic that showed that the fourth lane did not always stop. (with a red “X” where the collisions often occured.)
But I don’t know if they were waved thru. Just that people intentionally gave them a space to pass through.