You have to cross roads. You do so with care. I hike--and that means at times I end up walking along roads with no sidewalk and where most drivers are not expecting pedestrians. I take the working assumption that drivers will not see me, safety only comes from getting away from the road when there's a car about.
Obviously one has to cross the road as a pedestrian sometimes but if I'm being honest in many places around where I live in the US I go out of my way to not. Stroads plus the lack of sidewalks, guarded crosswalks and blind corners make it so that it's dumb to cross in many places.
Even guarded crosswalks are hit or miss (no pun intended). The lights are all timed for vehicles and most drivers around here think stop lights are more of a suggestion than a rule. I've lost count the number of times I've almost been hit crossing the street by a person trying to turn left before the light changes.
Having grown up in a much smaller town where we walked/rode our bikes everywhere it's jarring.
Yes, exactly! I'm Australian, it's perfectly normal here to walk on the road when there aren't footpaths, ideally walking into the direction of traffic flow so that you can see oncoming cars.
Pedestrian crossings aren't provided on most roads outside of shopping and business areas - you simply have to cross at a safe point and try to be visible.
I really don't know about the US but I can't imagine it's that different: surely people need to be able to cross the road without being run down as an unclassified object.
I'm even afraid of walking because of cars. Last week when crossing a driveway near where I live, twice a car blasted through the pedestrian crosswalk without even looking.
Drivers are out of control and are blissfully (or willfully) unaware of the dangers they pose to others.
I don't mind if cars drive through on the walk phase as long as they slow to a crawl and make sure no one is walking first. Sometimes the road is very much clear because the person has already crossed, there's no need to hold up the cars.
And I say this as a pedestrian, I walk to work. And I am afraid of getting hit every day but for a different reason. The crosswalks are in the stupidest friggin spots, around a bend in the road, and cars are apparently allowed to park right up against the crosswalk so if even want a hope in hell of being seen you have to walk part way onto the road, and peak your head around the van that's blocking the view for both you and oncoming cars, and then hope they can see you around the bend in the road.
I think the only circumstance where a pedestrian can cross a road without watching for cars is when protected by a traffic light, and even then that's not wise. A pedestrian crossing a road outside of any crosswalk at night and not watching for cars is playing russian roulette. Doesn't mean the driver (or self-driving system) shouldn't have spotted it as well to prevent the accident. But it is clearly a key driver enabling that accident.
I've seen drivers blindly turn right or left without checking for pedestrians so many times I've lost count. How am I, as a pedestrian, supposed to cross only when such a driver is incapable of hitting me? Only walk at night when there's no traffic?
For 25 years I walked to work. The number of times, in a crosswalk, I had to jump out of the way to avoid serious injury or death could not be counted on my fingers and toes. And I was hyper-aware of vehicles (I include bicycles in that, because many times I had to avoid them, too).
Now, I'm in a city (in the Bay Area) and I was walking from a residential area into the city (2-3 miles one way). Still, you would not expect lawful crossing of a street to be so dangerous.
All the cars around you will see you before you get anywhere near the road. As long as you approach the road to cross, perhaps as you've always done, you'll be granted access to cross with little fear.
What I was pointing out is that distraction is the problem. Walking on a street and operating a vehicle are both potentially dangerous tasks, and people need to be vigilant looking out for others and themselves. If you're going to cross the road -jaywalking or not-, you should look both ways. You can't assume that a driver is going to see you, just as a driver can't assume that you aren't going to hop out in front of them, right or wrong as you feel that may be.
Well yeah, you don't cross highways. Most streets are not 8-11 lanes wide, particularly in places where anyone would ever be walking along them. Places where pedestrians are common are in-town, low-speed (25-30 mph posted) streets.
As a pedestrian, you have right of way over turning traffic. Of course, it's prudent to exercise reasonable care and not just assume a driver has seen you especially if visibility isn't good for whatever reason.
OTOH, especially at a busy intersection, if you're just standing on the sidewalk looking confused, a driver looking to make a turn is probably going to just shrug and turn right through the crosswalk. Some drivers will doubtless be overly aggressive or inattentive. But a random driver is also not going to sit there forever waiting for you to make up your mind about whether to cross or not.
Your example is absurd. Where do you live that you ever have to cross an 8 lane highway on foot? City streets have crosswalks and stop lights. When used properly it's perfectly safe for everyone.
Yes, that's precisely what happens. You'll be given a safe berth, with cars stopping or avoiding you by at least the distance you could conceivably fall over.
Personally that's already how I cross the street, and my confidence in human drivers isn't anywhere near so great.
For every instance a driver like you has with someone crossing like that, there are probably 100+ of someone walking and a driver nearly plowing over them.
I walk and bike around my town a lot, and I'm very cognizant of my surroundings.
I can not even count how many times I've had people driving see me start to go in to a crosswalk and just totally blast through it, back out of driveways where I was very visible on the driver's side and not even look (TWICE only getting attention in time to not get hit by bashing on the car), people driving at high speed in to parking lots inches away.
A month ago I was walking out of a nearby park on the only road in and out, that doesn't have a sidewalk for some idiotic reason, and I had some asshole try to sideswipe me and ended up clipping me with their mirror on purpose.
Think about this next time you bring up a single instance of someone walking in a dangerous way. The design of cities in the US and the contempt of many people driving is many, many times worse for pedestrians than the other way around.
For those of us that need to walk while the powers that be figure out how to save us from cars, my suggestion is to assume that they can't see you. Because they probably can't. No, they don't see you when you cross the street when the light is green for you. No, they can't see you when you cross the street on a 25mph school zone. No, they can't see you when you walkway is closed (for construction) and you need to walk onto the road for a bit. And, they especially can't see you at night.
If you make eye contact with its driver, then maybe they've seen you. Otherwise, they can't see you.
I don't think GP is suggesting that you step out in front of cars and hope for the best, but rather that you cross in places other than those which have been deemed for crossing. In theory, walking a half mile to a crosswalk, waiting 30 seconds, crossing when okayed by the light, and walking a half mile back should be "safer". But just walking across the road when safe requires an understanding of how traffic works and how to judge safety.
It might be Baader-Meinhoff phenomonon, but In the past two days I've seen multiple pickup trucks hopping the curb in places that I find shocking, so I'm becoming more inclined toward taking safety into ones own hands. The system clearly isn't working.
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