This reminds me of the time I was crossing a complicated five or six way intersection in Boston. I couldn’t name it, but it was shortly after crossing the Charles from Charlestown to downtown. I patiently waited (a couple minutes) for a pedestrian light and immediately started to cross—and was nearly totaled by a girl on a bicycle. She stopped and started cursing me (very large vocabulary too). I sure wish there had been a cop to ticket her.
… which are NOT true if the crossing signal are indicating Don’t Walk (in a non-flashing mode;)). Pedestrians also do not have the right of way if they are crossing in a non-crosswalk area (jaywalking), at least in Wisconsin.
If the pedestrian signals don’t match up with the traffic signal you should contact someone as that would be a fairly dangerous situation. In my, oh 25 years of driving, I have never seen that happen.
True, and I would always do my best to not hit them but if the unfortunate should happen and I did hit a pedestrian the right of way rules are used to determine who’s at fault.
If I am following the rules of the road and a pedestrian darts out in the middle of the block from behind something that prevents me from seeing them and stopping in time it is the pedesrians fault. Not magically mine.
True, and I should have put “in the middle of the block where there is not a pedestrian crossing.” so allow me to restate.
If I am following the rules of the road and a pedestrian darts out in the middle of the block, where there is no pedestrian crossing, from behind something that prevents me from seeing them and stopping in time it is the pedesrians fault. Not magically mine.
A small town I drive through daily recently placed a mid block crosswalk. A local ne’er-do-well has been hanging out on the sidewalk where the crosswalk is located. I’ve never seen him cross, but he gives drivers fits.
Note that “crossings” is not “crosswalks”. Here, it’s a striped area that covers 2/3 of the length of the store’s frontage along with signs that indicate that motorists must yield to pedestrians in the crossing area. As a result, people come moping out of the store at 1/2 of a snail’s pace with overloaded grocery carts and don’t even bother to look to see if anything’s coming because the cars have to stop anyway.
Ok, let’s see if I can make everyone happy with this one. (I doubt it but I’ll try.)
If I am following the rules of the road and a pedestrian darts out in the middle of the block, where there is no pedestrian crossing, from behind something that prevents me from seeing them and stopping in time it is not automatically my fault.
Likewise at the local Safeway supermarkets. In those cases I think the markings are a good idea, but I agree that the practice has had an unfortunate carryover effect into other areas, like the place I work: my city’s convention center. The convention center’s parking lot is across a street. The problem with this is that event attendees — particularly those from out of town — don’t seem to realize that this is a city street with a 25MPH speed limit they’re crossing. It’s not just part of the parking lot like they would see at Wal-Mart or Safeway. And so I constantly see people leaving the building, stepping off the curb, and walking straight across the street (or even better, strolling four-abreast down the middle of the street) without bothering to look for oncoming cars. I’m astonished that nobody has been hit yet.
They follow it in L.A. too. There are a lot of crosswalks on the west side and drivers are really good about stopping for people waiting on the sidewalk to cross.
Traffic is horrible in L.A., but in general drivers here are better than any place else I’ve lived. They stop for pedestrians, don’t block intersections, alternate left and right at merges, yield right-of-way properly at 4-way stops, and generally know their shit. I chalk it up to two things – you don’t want to fuck with LAPD, and you don’t want to do ANYTHING that will impede the orderly creep of traffic and bring the wrath of your fellow Angelenos down upon you.
