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?
In Norway you don't break stride as a pedestrian, so any number above 0 seconds is unusual at a zebra crossing. There's always this "oops I'm not in Norway anymore" moment i have as i consider trying the same shit in other countries.
In Denmark cars only have to stop at zebra crossings if you walk.
So i just stare into the eyes of the driver and walk. Of course not if theyre too close, and wont be able to stop.
In any eastern European country, I simply look the driver dead in the eye and pass, if they're far enough to actually stop. However, whenever I visit Greece, especially Athens, not even the green light can save you. There is a running joke among Greeks and it goes along the lines of "stronger car wins". Basically, if you have a fast car, you have priority on any intersections and pedestrian crossings, and the police do jack shit about it.
Man, I love Greece, beautiful country, amazing people, but with disfunctioning police and government in general.
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.
At some point drivers got afraid of the large crowd and didn't dare get close.
Jeez, where do you live?
I'm in Canada and have never had to wait even remotely that long in any city I've been a pedestrian in. It's certainly a poorly followed law in that I'll regularly see people not stop even if they had tons of time, but the majority of drivers do stop. I don't think I've ever waited more than maybe a minute. I'd usually have to wait longer at a light than I would at an uncontrolled intersection or no-intersection crosswalk.
That said, the most annoying was in Saskatoon, where I went to university. There's a road going up to the university where there's a very long stretch with no controlled crosswalks until you get to the very end. I learned to just cross at the end (even if it meant needing to loop back) because crossing at an uncontrolled crosswalk in the middle was annoying. I would have often been on the top part of a T intersection and there were always parked cars, so being seen as trying to cross the road was the challenge there. But even then it usually wasn't more than a minute and crossing from the other side was a lot easier because it was so much more obvious that you were waiting to cross. It was also a 2 lane road, but usually when one direction stops, drivers in the other lane figure it out.
Like a minute at most. And that's in my entire life, even in busy cities.
And do you notice any etiquette trends like I describe in that one part?
Absolutely, yeah, allthough it has little to do with type of vehicles and seems to be entirely down to location of the zebra crossing.
