[mikeash]

I was recently in Beijing, where the supremacy of the automobile over the pedestrian is just about taken to its logical conclusion.

The US puts cars on a high footing compared to pedestrians, with pedestrians restricted to crossing roads at certain points, generally better signaling and routes for cars, etc. Yet cars are still required to yield to pedestrians when e.g. turning or at a marked crosswalk.

In Beijing, the idea of yielding to pedestrians when turning doesn't seem to exist. Crossing a major intersection, even with full signaling, is an adventure and an exercise in attempting to look in all directions simultaneously. It's even worse than you might think, because the sidewalk often doubles as a parking lot, so somebody might by trying to drive up where you're waiting, or worse, come up behind you! And you are expected to yield. It got to the point where I measured the difficulty of any walk not in terms of distance but in terms of how many intersections I'd have to cross.

Beijing is pretty walkable overall but at the same time this can make it extremely unpleasant, depending on where you are. I wonder if that might not be where the US is heading if we're not careful about it.

(The Chinese are strangely cavalier about cars in general. Essentially nobody wears seat belts, for example, and drunk driving is common. No surprise that their death rate per vehicle is three times higher than the US's. Seat belts would be such an easy way to reduce that. It's hard to understand.)

[saraid216]

> In Beijing, the idea of yielding to pedestrians when turning doesn't seem to exist.

It's odd. I remember when people were bemused by the bicycle city, and yet I also remember when I learned that the way to cross the street in Beijing was never to indicate that you could see a car coming, because then they'd assume you'd stop. Instead, you watch for traffic out of your peripheral vision and keep your eyes forward so that they'd feel you couldn't see them.

I wonder if that's still common wisdom.

> It got to the point where I measured the difficulty of any walk not in terms of distance but in terms of how many intersections I'd have to cross.

One of the possibly most frustrating moments I had was recently in downtown San Jose. My cousin and I (and others) had finished lunch and left into an alleyway. Her four-year-old son cheerfully ran out to the sidewalk, and we panicked because it would have been so easy for him to keep going out to the street itself.

There was no harm (he indignantly pointed out that he had not gone into the street), but it perplexes me why we find these kinds of risks acceptable. Every block, we've essentially put down a death trap for the young. I could understand it if this was the edge of the untamed wilds and we couldn't really do anything about the wolf pack in the area, but... we built these cities.

> The Chinese are strangely cavalier about cars in general. Essentially nobody wears seat belts, for example,

I've noticed this is prevalent elsewhere in Asia: there are often similar claims made about Mumbai or Bangkok.

[mikeash]

> I wonder if that's still common wisdom.

Personally, I think that not indicating you can see cars coming and crossing that way would be a good way to get killed. However, I haven't actually tried it. I haven't observed the natives using this tactic either as far as I can tell.

[WildUtah]

It's ironic. Peking was considered a beautiful city of clean air (except dust storm season) full of bicyclists during the oppressive communist era.

Now in the time of industrial crony capitalism, it's famous as the most polluted capital in the world. The streets are dangerous and cars have replaced bikes making the powerful insiders even more oppressive against individuals because now they can kill people with impunity.

Surely this is better than communism, but unlike the Taiwanese the Red China capitalists have imported every Western vice tenfold.

Only during the Dèng era was Peking open to new ideas and businesses, full of pedestrians and bicycles free from fear, and able to look up to clear skies.

[Zigurd]

Yes! Having seen the "Nixon in China" images of a surging wave of bicycles at every green light at an intersection, I was shocked to see in person how completely cars have taken over, and how badly Beijing drivers treat cyclists, driving within inches of them. The only reason there isn't carnage on every block is that nothing moves faster than 10mph.

Taipei, meanwhile, is overrun with gas scooters. These pollute worse than cars. The mainland Chinese could not allow gas scooters because of their pollution output. Every office in Taipei has racks in the stairwells for hanging up your very necessary rain poncho.

A great irony is that the Chinese have mastered the ability to make cheap electric bikes. Some Chinese use them. Very few Taiwanese, because they can't keep up with gas scooters. But you'll see lots of Chinese electric bikes in New York.

[vacri]

In Beijing, the idea of yielding to pedestrians when turning doesn't seem to exist.

In parts of the US, too. Travelling across the US, there were a couple of places where as a pedestrian I had the right of way (pedestrian crossing light illuminated) and I actually had to stop crossing otherwise I would walk into the side of the car turning right in front of me, cutting me off.

I also noticed wandering around some inner suburbs of Austin that it was hostile to pedestrians - some houses just decided to stretch their gardens all the way to the road, blocking the footpath. Pedestrian traffic had to step out onto the road, in one case a secondary thoroughfare, to get past the property.

[freehunter]

Is a lawn legally allowed to block a sidewalk? I know the right-of-way stretches well past the boundaries of the road. I've always walked on the edge of people's lawns when there's no sidewalk, because I'm fairly certain it's legal to do so. If there's no sidewalk, pedestrians walk on your lawn within a few feet of the road, and there's nothing you can do about it.

One thing I would never do is step into the street to walk, regardless of how angry a homeowner might be about it.