I’m a NY metro-trained driver too. Haven’t driven in CA much, but south FL drivers are maddening. I have driven in London, and think it shares a lot of the same aspects as NYC driving.
Drivers in intense metro areas generally learn their cars better than others. We know better just how quickly we can stop, we know better just how close we can get to another vehicle on all 4 sides, and we are much more accustomed to dealing with pedestrians year-round. We are also accustomed to accounting for limited sight lines.
Well, a very hearty “FUCK YOU” to drivers who stop in the crosswalk. Like it’s going to get you to where you want to go any faster. Am I supposed to climb over your roof or open the door and climb over your seats?
I have been known to go to the front of the car and stand there for a couple of minutes, looking very confused.
When I’m not driving my car, I am a pedestrian. I know well what it is like to be following all the rules and common sense behavior as I carefully cross the street and still nearly get killed by some dumbass who didn’t see me or some complete asshole who did see me but didn’t slow down.
When I’m driving the car and I approach a corner with a light or a mid-block ped crossing without a light, I look out for pedestrians lingering on the corners and stepping into the street. I stop and let them pass. I’m not an asshole and I don’t want to be a murderer. I’m a relaxed driver.
Pedestrians in general are not problems. Sensible people who wait at a crosswalk until it’s safe to walk are good upstanding citizens. High fives to them.
The problems are the clueless people that don’t realize that you’ve got to give drivers some reaction time before running out into the street in front of their car, otherwise they will kill you, you will be dead, and they will have to live with the guilt for the rest of their lives.
Whether it’s because you’re a tourist with your eyes on the skyline, a person with a phone in your hands, a so-far immortal teenager, or you’re just not paying attention, you are a problem when you cross the street without taking into account the approaching car. It’s in your best interest to maximize the chances of them stopping for you. That is all.
OP again. I am not a “clueless chucklefuck” who is surprised by people using the crosswalk. I am a normal driver who is annoyed by clueless pedestrians walking out in front of traffic in such a manner that brakes have to be locked up in order to not hit them. What is that so hard to understand about that? The idea that stepping hard on brakes equates driving at excessive speed is simply ridiculous. By that logic anyone who ever hit a deer was driving too fast. The law in my state says the driver must yield in a marked crosswalk or ANY intersection unless said intersection is controlled by a light or traffic officer.
Someone up-thread mentioned a blind intersection with a yield sign and equated a crosswalk to that. I have never seen a blind intersection with a yield sign. Such intersections have stop signs, not yield signs. If they don’t, they’re poorly designed.
When I’m driving a car and sitting at a stop sign waiting to cross and there’s a lot of traffic I just wait until it is safe to do so. I fail to see why pedestrians can’t do the same thing. Every first grader learns this. Left-right-left and cross when its safe. The law is necessary not because drivers are wantonly mowing down walkers. Its necessary because pedestrians have demonstrated that they are unable to judge when they can cross the street without being hit.
Finally, I am talking about the roads and conditions specifically where I live. Not NYC or LA or Mudflats. There are traffic lights every few blocks and they cycle rapidly. I have walked across these intersections for for more than 30 years and waiting for a safe gap in traffic is simply not an issue. 30 seconds to one minute maximum. If people need a law to protect them from their own poor judgement, fine. I can live with that. But as soon as you give a group a right (or right-of-way), there will be some who abuse it. Its THOSE chucklefucks have a problem with.
If you believe that, just because you have the right of way, you will do as you damn well please, you’re one of them.
How are people who jump out into intersections not assholes? I seriously don’t even understand this.
I don’t care about what the OP’s problem is. He’s speeding (he says he wasn’t, but feel free to call him a liar), he’s impatient, he needs to simmer his shorts - whatever, fine. How is darting out in front of moving vehicles not stupid dickery?
If brakes are ‘locking up’ when you are driving in a heavy tourist area I am inclined to think you are going too fast.
If you were on a major freeway and someone stepped out into the road and you braked hard enough to lock-up I would be far more sympathetic. But you are in the tourist areas where you have to anticipate that there are people around.
That you are driving fast enough in a heavy tourist area to lock up your brakes when you fail to anticipate a problem.
That someone behind you rear-ends you because of your stop means they were also driving too fast *and *driving too close.
No. It is not.
Most deer are hit on faster country roads and leap out without much warning as to their crossing points. There is a big difference between that and an area where you know there are a lot of people.
We have enforced crosswalks on one of the main streets through campus. There are about five in a row, maybe 30 feet between them. This road is also a thoroughfare from one part of town to the other, so it’s not just a small road on campus.
It’s really difficult when classes let out because you can wait a couple minutes at each crosswalk, but that’s part of living here. The speed limit is 20, so few people are zipping through.
What’s difficult is the group of kids standing on the sidewalk talking, and then one decides to break away and cross the street without looking to see if a car is already starting through the crosswalk. Also annoying are the skateboarders and bicyclists who are coming from a cross sidewalk perpinducular to the street, who have a full head of steam, and who just ride across without slowing down. I can see pedestrians and try to figure out if they want to cross, but some kid on a bike coming out of some bushes I can’t anticipate. And yes, if I did hit him I imagine he would bear some responsibility, but I really don’t want to hit some kid.
And I get annoyed at night when kids dressed in dark clothes decide to cross in between the crossings where it’s pretty dark, because I can’t see them at all. Kids jaywalk during the day, too, but at least I can see them.
I don’t think you’ll get any opposition to this. Leaping out into a busy crosswalk (not necessarily an intersection) is foolish.
The problem is that we way have different thresholds for what counts as jumping out into a crosswalk. If a car is 1/4 mile away in a 25 MPH zone I should be able to walk into the crosswalk without a problem. If a car is 10’ away in a 25 MPH zone it would be foolish to step into the crosswalk. Where is the sweet spot that everyone agrees on should be the amount of space where stepping out is OK?
IMO, pedestrians often deal with drivers who are clueless and won’t slow down no matter how much lead time is given. I’ve certainly dealt with it when on foot. It’s compounded by pedestrians who tentatively hang out at the crosswalk causing all traffic to slow but never quite get up the nerve to step out into the street, annoying everyone.
Much of the rest of the world uses the yield (or give way) sign almost exclusively. There’s nothing improper about it; the important meaning is the same as that of a stop sign, you don’t have the right-of-way. They just aren’t going to quibble over whether your car settles back in its suspension or not at a yield sign.
I can think of a whole bunch of intersections that are yield controlled in my area. Here are a few more examples.
I can think of no reason to change them to stop signs, they seem to do their job just fine. My primary point is this: whenever you don’t have the right of way (and you don’t at a yield sign or at a crosswalk), you shouldn’t drive as if you just get to keep moving. Any yield situation comes with the possibility of stopping; if you aren’t prepared for it, it’s on you, not on the person with the right-of-way.
I’m not going to dart out in front of moving vehicles as a pedestrian, as I value my life. But as a driver, I recognize that it is my responsibility to be prepared to yield to pedestrians at crosswalks; that pedestrians can be unpredictable; and that it is my job to be ready to react to that unpredictability in as safe a manner as is possible. Yes, sometimes that means going a few miles under the speed limit in congested areas.
If it involves hitting your brakes pretty hard even while going the speed limit in order to avoid hitting them, which is what the OP described, the pedestrian is out of the sweet spot.
People in this thread have all kinds of imaginary scenarios in which the OP was bat-out-of-helling or not paying attention, but if you’re driving at the speed limit, see people standing around, and continue driving because they’re just standing there and then they dart out, you will have to hit the brakes hard even if you were *under *the speed limit (unless you were in a parking lot). You’re not to blame for not having anticipated their lunacy, and the pedestrian who jumped out is an asshole. What is the formula for calculating, precisely, in meters how far the car needs to be away from the pedestrian and what the car’s velocity needs to be? I don’t know. I’m not a mathologist, but I’ve been crossing the street by myself for a long time now, and whatever my rough, shady formula is is good enough that I don’t need anyone to brake hard for me.
If you are only driving in LA commuter traffic, then yes those drivers suck as much as any other place. There is also another sub group here that I won’t get into because everyone will say I’m racist, but there was a big problem with them getting licenses without having any drivers training. This is more of an Orange County problem.
I’ve driven all over the US, parts of Canada, northern Mexico and Mexico City and I find the average S CA driver better at not creating an accident than any where else. OTOH, we are host to a lot of tourists, many who rent cars when they get here so they are incognito, but their driving style outs them. I was behind a tourist on Monday whose head was on a swivel as he crept down a freeway on ramp - dunno what he was looking at since it was just construction there, but whatever it was caused him to merge onto the freeway at about 30 - 40 mph. The honking horns and screeching brakes woke him up and he attained freeway speed quickly. I hope he learned that gawking at things is something one should do on foot, away from traffic …
Yeah, the rain thing. I never have understood that but I learned to drive in the frozen north.
He obviously was a Minnesotan. This is how most people merge on freeways in the Twin Cities. I was taught that it’s called an “acceleration lane” for a reason, but I’m very much in the minority. (And learned to drive a hundred miles from the nearest limited-access highway.)
While I don’t defend jumping straight out in front of the car, one of the major complaints from the OP is rear-end collisions as a result of this. I have no sympathy. Rear-ending another car when it has to stop suddenly on an urban street is purely and simply a result of tailgating or not paying attention while driving.
Walking. From the sidewalk. Not BAMFing into the street. Not somersaulting from a tree. Walking. From the sidewalk. Where you could see them walking. You do keep an eye on the sidewalks when you drive, don’t you?
You see the crosswalk in the distance, so you check for anyone you might be required to yield to, and only proceed if you’re sure it’s safe to do so while continuing to check the entire time. This isn’t hard. Do pedestrians in your town wear gilly suits and barrel roll from the bushes? That would be the more apt analogy for deer, although they are faster.
Like those folks coming from the other direction when you’re trying to turn left. Or the car that got the stop sign first. And emergency vehicles running their lights and sirens. Please tell us more. You can find a list of abusers here: http://ddot.dc.gov/node/473422
And the law in most states doesn’t give anyone the right of way. It requires you to yield it.
