In Oslo at least, the crosswalks (usually) have lights if there's an intersection, and since there are no laws against crossing on red you are free to do so, as long as you don't create any dangerous situations.
I'd argue that the lights are not to improve traffic flow, but to signal pedestrians that it's safe to cross, something sighted, young or otherwise healthy people often take for granted by just looking both ways before crossing.
So no - the lights aren't only to improve traffic. The dynamic changes when there are no jaywalking laws.
In the US, pedestrian signals do NOT signal when it’s safe to cross. Cars almost always have a green in the same direction, meaning they can turn into you. I almost get run over once a month because of this.
When I visited the USA for a conference, I looked up a nice coffee place that was just across the street from the academic campus where I was staying. I went to the nearest crossing point, waited for several cycles of the traffic lights, and still couldn't deduce when it was safe to cross.
The road markings were black and white stripes, which mean "cars must always stop for pedestrians crossing here" where I live (UK). The description above chimes with my experience. Who does have priority when the light is red but cars are still turning right?
In the end, I went back and had the nasty coffee in the university. It seemed to dangerous to try to cross.
Edit: this is different in different states? It was in North Carolina for reference.
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.
Pedestrians have the right of way compared to cars with a red light. Cars turning right on red are required to stop before turning, but whether or not they do depends on the culture of the locality.
Also, as a note, college campuses are some of the worst places for cars and pedestrians to have to interact. The students seem to ignore the rules of the road regardless of whether they are pedestrians or drivers.
The best understanding of those painted markings is that they mean nothing until you find strong social conventions indicating otherwise. City norms will be passed as state laws, creating discrepancies in rural regions between the law and the expectations. Bad drivers flow from everywhere to everywhere else with no regard for discrepancies in laws. The only markings I would trust are the scramble intersections, which I've only seen in Guam. And walk signals can often be trusted.
For evidence that people don't know state/local laws, ask a group of people in the US when they are permitted to u turn. It varies widely, mostly in insignificant ways.
It varies from state to state and city to city. Some have the very regulation you are talking about. I have never seen it enforced.
In your case if there was no indicator light. Then you could go for it when the traffic was going in the same direction as you or when clear from the other direction.
The general rule of thumb is from any corner you can cross. That does not mean you get to stop traffic to do so. Though it seems much more common now for people to just cross wherever they want in the area I live in. They seem surprised when I honk at them. It shakes them out of them looking down at their phone while randomly walking around. You may have 'right of way' but the driver does not always see you in time. Be safe.
I don't get this. You acknowledge that they have right of way. You have apparently had plenty of time to stop and have done so. Yet you insist on honking at them as if they did something wrong?
The law under the Uniform Vehicle Code, adopted by most states, is that there is a crosswalk (marked or unmarked) between any two sidewalks at a corner. Drivers have a legal responsibility to yield to pedestrians there. Drivers almost always flagrantly violate this law.
Maybe roll down your window and say something instead of blaring your horn at people who aren’t encased in a car. Although I am not sure why you think you have a right to teach strangers a lesson.
I have to say I am disgusted with HN. Horns aren’t meant for telling people they’re doing something you don’t like. They’re for preventing other cars from colliding with your car. Pedestrians pose no harm to your vehicle, so if you’re out there honking at pedestrians, you’re behaving in a shitty manner and making the road more adversarial for everyone.
Pedestrians absolutely pose potential harm to a car (though, of course, the car poses far more potential harm to the pedestrian), especially with all of the crumple zones and sensors. Even a relatively low speed collision of say, 25 mph, I'd be surprised if the car is getting away with less than $5k in repairs.
Jaywalking is dangerous, especially on busy streets. And I admit to my fair amount jaywalking when I worked in downtown Chicago.
The horn is primarily about expressing anger but about imminent danger. A pedestrian steps out, from limitted visibility between cars, into traffic they deserve to be honked at. Not because of anger, but because they are putting themselves and others at undue risk.
That said, I don't think Ive ever personally seen someone respond to a horn in a fashion to avoid an accident. Twice last year, I was involved in accidents caused by someone else changing into my lane. Both times I saw it coming, laid on the horn and braked, but they kept coming faster than I could stop.
One, I couldnt avoid at all. We were in a construction zone, and the car next to me just kept coming over. I saw it coming, but had no where to go. No shoulder, just a concrete K-rail with about 6 inches of wiggle room. Side swiped me at about 55 mph. Entire driver's side was fuckedd up. Couldnt even open my door. Also managed to fuck up some of the passenger side as I did everything I could to get out of the way. (little bit of fender damage, cut both tires and scraped up a wheel)
The second one was I was in a left turn lane and the dude tried to force is way in. I didnt even see his signal until it was too late. Again, laid on the horn and brake, still mamaged to put his rear door into my passenger side front quarter panel.
Had a third actual miss earlier this year. Was driving in the 2nd from left lane in a rain storm, doing around 80mph on the highway. Car in the left lane, without signaling, starts coming over. Again, slam on the brakes and the horn, asshole keeps coming. Went from 80 to 60 in about a second or so, nearly getting rearended in the process. My car also started going sideways. In a lesser car, I probably would have lost it, but mine is pretty stable. Soon as I let hard off the brake, it recovered easily.
Point is, everyone assumes if someone is honking they're road raging at you, and some surely use it that way, but it's primarily about signaling imminent danger, and you should really take note (and probably return to your lane until you can figure out what the danger is by checking your blind spots, etc).
When the dude is walking across a 3 way 45MPH in each direction street in a low light situation. Then 1 block away was a well lit cross walk. Yeah he gets the horn. Sorry if I did not make that clear. Did not think I had to... Oh that happened to me just last week. Although I am not sure why you think it is OK for that 1 dude to hold up about 40 other people.
That's not what horns are for. You seem to think it's a punitive device, and I certainly would interpret it similarly to you aiming the muzzle of a gun at my chest.
Granted, I'll agree that's a dumb situation to cross the street, but your actions make it even worse.
To be clear, I mean that if everyone did what you do, going around rationalizing how people "get the horn" when they upset you rather than when your car is in legitimate imminent danger of a collision, we're mainly accomplishing two things:
1. Making driving more aggressive as a whole, associating all these little driving interactions with BLARING CAR HORN SOUNDS
2. Cheapening the meaning of the car horn for when it actually matters
The horn isn't a tool for letting out your aggression. Try screaming obscenities loudly in your car or something else fun like that.
> Although I am not sure why you think it is OK for that 1 dude to hold up about 40 other people
This is a perfect illustration of the US's driving-first culture. Let's do some math here. 40 people / 1.7 people per car average [1] = ~23.529 or 24 cars (which may be the case if it's rush hour, but probably not if it's not). If this is a 3 way intersection, and each of the cars is evenly distributed between directions (which I realize is incorrect, of course), then there are ~7.843 or 8 cars per side. Assuming an (informally weighted) average car size of 174 in. per car [2], with 2 ft of distance between each car, then the block length is a minimum of 1406 ft. Given that the average person walks at 4.6 ft/s [3], this distance would take 5.09 min. to traverse, just to get to your well lit next block. The average US commute is 26.1 min [4], which means just getting to the next block to cross at the well lit intersection would be 1/5 of the average commute, let alone the time most people are willing to tolerate to go to the grocery or pharmacy.
Obviously there are a lot of assumptions in this calculation, but it really goes a long way to showing how little American car-first culture thinks of pedestrian infrastructure, attractiveness, and travel times. "Just" walking over to the next, well-lit block, immediately makes a pedestrian trip for chores non-viable for anyone that values their time. To me, there also seems an in-built disdain for the time and safety of the pedestrian, and those attitudes do nothing but make it more difficult for Americans to do anything without their cars.
Where I live in the US, my understanding is that pedestrians always have the right of way at intersections (regardless of whether there are any traffic or pedestrian signals) unless:
1. There is a pedestrian signal that says to NOT cross, or
2. The traffic signal going in the direction the pedestrian is walking is red.
So if the light is green and the pedestrian signal does not say to not cross, then the pedestrian has the right of way over any cars turning. However, as with anything traffic related, that doesn't mean that a pedestrian can intentionally create an unsafe situation (e.g., start crossing the street as a car is turning).
The problem I've seen is that (especially in suburbs where pedestrians are rarer) drivers don't check for pedestrians. Almost every time I'm walking for any length of time I nearly get hit by a car that assumes that a green light means they're free to turn right without any restrictions. This isn't me intentionally creating an unsafe situation (often I'm already in the intersection), it's drivers who see so few pedestrians they're not trained to think of them.
This is anecdotal evidence, but I moved from a european town of 200 000 to a mega-city of 20 000 000 and I've seen far fewer incidents here during the last 5 years than the first 30 in my old hometown combined.
This is my impression as well, having been both a driver and pedestrian in the suburbs and in a big city. Driving in a densely populated city trains you to think there’s a pedestrian waiting to pop out of every nook and cranny and hop in front of your car. You might even witness one crawling out of a sewer hole to stand in the middle of the street, and it wouldn’t be too much of a surprise when it happens.
As someone who has commuted primarily by bike or on foot in the US for the better part of the past 10+ years, I can confirm that this description is spot on.
I have a crossing signal. Cars going the same direction as me also have green lights. They make right/left turns into my path ALL THE TIME. I should have the right of way, but that doesn't do me any good when I get hit by a 2-ton metal machine going 40mph. I guess my ghost can take solace in my wife's victorious wrongful death suit?
In the UK pedestrians do not have the right of way unless at a traffic light crossing or in the rare zebra crosswalks. That was rather a culture shock for me.
Rule 170 of the highway code: "watch out for pedestrians crossing a road into which you are turning. If they have started to cross they have priority, so give way"
Right of way is for pedestrians on any road in the US, however you can be arrested for public nuisance on a busy non pedestrian toad such as an exit expressway.
>that doesn't mean that a pedestrian can intentionally create an unsafe situation (e.g., start crossing the street as a car is turning).
So does that mean a person is allowed to intentionally create an unsafe situation by maneuvering their 2 ton+ vehicle into a crosswalk when a pedestrian is approaching it
Seems like a cultural problem, not a crosswalk light problem. Most people (myself included) automatically slow down when driving into a crosswalk. Our intersections are usually fairly small, so it's hard to build up any speed, even if you wanted to.
Oh, it is definitely a huge cultural problem. In the US, many drivers will ignore the existence of pedestrians altogether. For example, pulling up to an intersection and only looking to the left before making a right turn, because that is the only direction that car traffic can be coming from.
It isn't every car by any means, but enough cars that pedestrians need to assume that drivers are incompetent until given evidence otherwise.
>> Oh, it is definitely a huge cultural problem. In the US, many drivers will ignore the existence of pedestrians altogether.
Strange, because most likely the majority of drivers also walk at least a short distance around the same cities they drive into.
In the US in particular, eyballing the number of cars and the number of pedestrians in images of places like New York etc that I've seen, it's very hard to believe that there's a clear line separating all those people walking about from all those people who drive cars, other than the specific time of day they do one or the other.
So you'd think that being careful around pedestrians should come naturally to most drivers, if nothing else because they'd want other drivers to be careful around them as pedestrians also.
You have to remember that the vast majority of the US is nothing like NYC in terms of walkability or population density, and in the city I live in (suburb of a major Texas city) there is literally nothing within walking distance of my house except a school, and some of the big streets don't even have sidewalks.
Many drivers are commuters from the suburbs who drive in the morning, park inside or very near their office building, and drive home in the evening. The downtowns of many US cities are completely dead after "working" hours.
>In the US in particular, eyballing the number of cars and the number of pedestrians in images of places like New York etc that I've seen
You sound like a non-American. Let me give you some advice: take everything you've ever seen about NYC, and file that in a different place in your brain's filing system away from your file labeled "America". It does not represent America in any way when talking about cars, walkability, culture, or really anything else really. It's a place that's totally unique in the world. For some reason, too many non-Americans see movies set in NYC and think that all of America is just like this, and it isn't at all.
(Personally, I wish it was more representative of America in terms of walkability, but it just isn't.)
It goes both ways. At least once a day (in the USA) I see a pedestrian walk or run into an intersection against their own red. A few are lost in their phones, but the vast majority simply take a glance to make sure you're going to slow down, and then charge on through.
It is still an entirely asymmetric situation. If a pedestrian is inattentive, the consequences fall on the pedestrian. If a driver is inattentive, the consequences fall on the pedestrian.
(This is not to imply that severe injury and death are appropriate "punishments" for walking inattentively, merely that the pedestrians have large incentive to modulate their behavior, while drivers do not.)
And then also, many pedestrians see the walk sign and just start crossing while staring at their phone without even glancing around to be sure there aren't any inattentive drivers heading their way.
While true, the distractedness (on the part of the pedestrian or the driver) doesn't absolve the driver of their responsibility to yield in this scenario. A driver who hits a pedestrian in this scenario will be subject to criminal and civil penalties, and rightly so.
I certainly hope I didn't imply otherwise. On a cultural and legal level, assigning fault/responsibility to drivers makes total sense. On a personal level, if I get killed I'm not gonna care that much that it "wasn't my fault" and I should take the precaution of looking up from my phone when walking in front of moving vehicles.
This doesn't completely jive with my experience. I live near schools and drivers aren't constantly almost running into kids walking to the park or school.
But it certainly seems true in busier areas with less pedestrian traffic such as mini malls. Especially when pulling out of parking lots.
> In the US, many drivers will ignore the existence of pedestrians altogether.
This is pretty limited to urban areas, in my experience. In more suburban and rural parts of the country, people are much more cautious and obedient to traffic signals and rights of way. Of course there are exceptions in both cases, but running red lights, turning into pedestrians/cyclists/etc is much more prominent in major cities. As an urban pedestrian, I just have to keep my head on a swivel because there's a good chance that the taxi/Uber across from me is going to run the light that just turned red so he can make his left turn instead of waiting for his signal.
Right-on-red is a huge problem in areas where pedestrians want to cross. If memory serves, the UK does not allow turns on red. That makes more sense to me.
On my walk to work, I have to cross one 8-lane suburban street. 4 thru lanes, plus several turn lanes in each direction. The radius of the corners is smooth. Stop lines are far back from the actual apex of the corner. So, cars can easily roll through corners at 40mph. They do this when I have a walk signal because they either have their own green, or they're turning on red and only looking for oncoming traffic (to their left) and not for pedestrians (to their right).
This. In Houston you have the added adventure of every 1 of every 2.5 people distracted driving and not looking where they are going or minding the pedestrian traffic.
In Boston cars are required to yield to pedestrians on turns, and many intersections have signs to remind them of this. That said, it's always a good idea to look and see what cars are actually doing, regardless of what laws and signals say.
I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the scramble. There are a few near me, on mid-sized roads.
I have to cross a fairly wide, busy road to get to work. I wish it had a scramble with no-turn-on-red signage. That would make my commute massively safer.
> Cars almost always have a green in the same direction, meaning they can turn into you.
This is where you are mistaken. In the US, cars are obligated to yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk while turning, even with a green light. The pedestrian signal indicates pedestrians have the right of way. Of course, drivers may illegally fail to yield, but whether a driver obeys the law is a different matter than what the law says.
In the US, you are generally safer crossing the street anywhere other than where there are painted crosswalks. They are always in terrible locations where there is guaranteed to be traffic and typically sight lines are poor.
In the city I live, there are flashing light crossings where cars are obliged to stop whenever there is a pedestrian on the road. Having lights is certainly to improve traffic flow rather than safety.
>Having lights is certainly to improve traffic flow rather than safety.
As a pedestrian I want traffic flow to be as predictable as possible because that makes it easier to get where I'm going safely and lights accomplish that goal better than roundabouts or stop signs even if the traffic speed through intersections is higher. Higher stakes, better odds.
I'd argue that the lights are not to improve traffic flow, but to signal pedestrians that it's safe to cross, something sighted, young or otherwise healthy people often take for granted by just looking both ways before crossing.
So no - the lights aren't only to improve traffic. The dynamic changes when there are no jaywalking laws.