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?
Back in high-school there was a street I had to cross on my way to school and there were no traffic lights at that crosswalk. It was a high speed street and there were lights at major intersections before and after that crosswalk, so cars tended to just blow through it regardless of anyone waiting to cross.
The biggest problem was not waiting for a car to stop, it was a car stopping on the first lane, forcing me to start crossing, only for a car to come shooting through the second lane without wondering why the other is stopped. That’s why I learned to avoid using the crosswalk, it was the most dangerous place to cross the street. I chose a place without a crosswalk where I could cross when I saw that both lanes are safe.