I detest when people saunter out into the crosswalk as the light turns against them and continue to saunter without the slightest effort to GET THEIR WORTHLESS JAYWALKING ASSES OUT OF THE FUCKING WAY!!!
BTW, I stop for pedestrians and don’t whip right turns into crosswalks. I do my part, I think.
Downtown DC is one of the worst, not so much because of the jaywalkers, but the sheer numbers of pedestrians make it nearly impossible to turn right or left in one stoplight cycle. They should have seperate light cycles for pedestrians and cars.
Here in Atlanta, neither drivers, pedestrians, nor bicyclists obey any traffic rules, as far as I can tell. (Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration, but you do see all three break the rules and show disregard for safety pretty often.) I blame the drivers the most just because you’re more likely to kill somebody being a stupid driver than being a stupid pedestrian.
Not only that, but it turns out that new sidewalks in Atlanta aren’t allowed to be tree-lined. Why? The Georgia DOT explained that sidewalks aren’t actually for people to walk on, they’re an 'auto recovery zone". In other words, if a sidewalk is tree-lined, and somebody loses control of his vehicle, he might hit a tree and get hurt, instead of safely driving on the sidewalk. I’m not kidding. The DOT prefers the chance of running over pedestrians on the sidewalk to the chance of an out-of-control car being stopped by a tree.
I’ve been to a few cities (Sydney, Australia, and San Francisco, CA come to mind) where a few of the biggest interesections, having the most pedestrians, have a light cycle that goes:
traffic north-south (no pedestrians)
traffic east-west (no pedestrians)
pedestrians crossing all ways, including diagonally (no cars)
It seems to work well, especially if you’re a pedestrian who wants to cross diagonally and can do it in one go.
Dang!!! Some of you guys live in some dangerous places!! I find that when I’m walking, just making sure I make eye contact with the person attempting to turn right across a “walk” signal will do the trick. If necessary (with pushy drivers) a stern, pointed stare will suffice.
The eye contact thing does work 99% of the time. I’ve only ever done the key-brandishing thing twice, and on both occassions the driver had already sterted to push around the corner despite the fact that he was almost hitting pedestrians.
As with many things, it’s only the bad ones we remember.
They have this setup at a few intersections in Old Pasadena (California), too. Most of the time it works OK.
It would work better, frankly, if pedestrians would pay more attention. Seriously, what I see a lot is people ignoring the walk/don’t walk sign and simply crossing the street when traffic moving parallel to their path has a green light (which is when they’d have the “WALK” sign in a conventional setup).
Which means that drivers still can’t turn without running over anybody.
The oft-quoted general rule in California is that “the car driver is always at fault in vehicle-vs.-pedestrian collisions.” I think many pedestrians interpret that to mean “I always have the right-of-way, and can cross the street whenever and wherever I want.”
Seriously, what I see a lot is people ignoring the walk/don’t walk sign and simply crossing the street when traffic moving parallel to their path has a green light (which is when they’d have the “WALK” sign in a conventional setup).