[tehwalrus]

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.

[ghaff]

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.

[aidenn0]

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.

[QuarterReptile]

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.

[elweston2]

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.

[brewdad]

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?

[akgerber]

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.

[isoskeles]

> They seem surprised when I honk at them.

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.

[isoskeles]

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.

[hermitdev]

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).

[tomhoward]

> I am disgusted with HN

It's one person out of hundreds of thousands who visit each day. And the comment is downvoted.

[elweston2]

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.

[isoskeles]

> he gets the horn

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.

[Karrot_Kream]

> Then 1 block away was a well lit cross walk

> 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.

[1]: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/tpm/guidance/avo_factors.pdf

[2]: https://www.reference.com/world-view/average-length-car-2e85...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferred_walking_speed

[4]: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/study-states-with-the-longes...