Where I live, there’s a law that says all vehicles have to yield for pedestrians at crosswalks. Of course this would be a thing, otherwise crosswalks would only be as good as any part of the road. Despite this, it’s a largely unfollowed rule, to severe degrees. To the extent that me and some friends have a “running gag” (generous way to put it) where some of us bet on who can wait at a crosswalk point and cross the street the quickest without going ahead before cars decided to stop. Tonight I had to wait twenty minutes for a black jeep to stop, the longest I’ve had to wait for years (and side note, I noticed that drivers of certain vehicle types/colors are more likely to stop for you), so I lost that bet tonight if we were doing it.

Some of us have also apparently led drivers to having bad vibes because some of us have used our phones to take extensive video of what’s going on, causing angry drivers (never referring to the ones that do stop for us) to yell that we’re invading privacy. And the response is always something along the line of “what are you going to do, would you really risk exposing yourself just to make a complaint that someone is making a video” before posting them to groups like the main Tumblr road conflict group (such stuff being hidden from there at the moment).

So what’s the longest you’ve ever had to wait to cross the street? And do you notice any etiquette trends like I describe in that one part?

  • @[email protected]
    16•1 year ago

    This unlocked a memory for me. In college my roommate and I took a late-night walk to a nearby diner, only a five minute walk from our dorm if jaywalking across one of the main streets in this town. Walking to the nearest crosswalk would more than double the trip, so patiently waiting for a break in traffic to safely cross was the norm.

    On one weekend in particular, one of the other big colleges was having an event of some kind (homecoming or parents weekend, or some crap like that) that packed this town to the gills and turned the main street into a sea of cars as far as the eye could see in both directions. But don’t picture everything at a stand-still… the nearby traffic light must have been shut off (or turned to a blinking yellow) because the sea of cars was moving at a slow but steady pace with no break whatsoever.

    Walking the extra few minutes west to the crosswalk, and then a few more back east to the restaurant, would have been the best bet, but our experience told us it would be wasteful because there must be a break in the traffic coming soon. There just had to be. As the minutes rolled by more we were joined by more dorm neighbors and other hopeful crossers, and we all stood there incredulous at just how perfectly bad this situation was.

    Just estimating here… we absolutely waited more than 20 minutes, possibly 30. And it’s been so long I can’t remember the circumstances that finally let us cross. Also, yeah, this is a great example of the sunk-cost fallacy.