Comment by potato3732842

NYC legalized jaywalking in 2024, and the change will take effect next month, Feb 2025. https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/jaywalking-legalized-in...

Our town has Installed several crosswalks with flashing lights in common crossing areas away from traffic lights. It feels many times safer.

It's usually because a driver turning (right) on green doesn't have to worry about merging into traffic, so they only need to focus on pedestrians. Hopefully they will. A driver turning right on red has traffic coming from their left and pedestrians walking in front, and they're usually more concerned about the cars, so they tend to look left while turning right. Ouch. It's a growing issue as well because of the growing size of cars. Littler people can be completely concealed behind a front grille.

A car turning left on green is also an issue because while they should be able to see and wait for pedestrians, they're often occluded by other cars and trucks, and those left turners can be in a hurry to proceed through a gap in traffic.

On a green arrow turn, drivers are looking to where they are going. Legally crossing pedestrians are in that cross walk where the driver is looking.

With right on red, the driver is also looking to where they are going, but legally crossing pedestrians are not there, they are directly in front of the car.

The riskiest thing for a pedestrian is approaching a right on red car from the left, because the driver is simply not looking at you.

The number of people that make right-on-reds that not once during the approach or during the turn look to their right is what makes it a problem. I have often been tempted to do one of those YT videos of people spending their day videoing people at intersections to show how prevalent bad behavior really is. I just have no presence there for it to make it worth my time. I know how bad it is, and adjust my personal behavior accordingly

Are you saying that a right-turn can be green simultaneous with the pedestrian's crossing light being green?

Because where I'm from, traffic lights are not allowed to be set up like that. No simultaneous green for crossing traffic flows, unless otherwise indicated (eg, an extra warning light+sign under the turn's traffic light flashing when it's green and off otherwise).

Drivers have to worry about the traffic which has the green light vs. just looking where they're going.

My anecdotal evidence is that everyone is looking out for themselves and people in bigger vehicles will always take advantage of that.

I make it clear with body language and eye contact that yes I see them and no I'm not meekly yielding my right of way. However, I leave just enough space to avoid being hit, for those situations when the True Assholes knowingly cut me off anyway. Or maybe they're not assholes by intent, but instead in the 90th percentile for inattentiveness and bad driving habits, which may even be the same thing. I don't know, I'm not a driver psychologist.

This is what was taught to me in drivers ed as a driver. Make eye contact with the pedestrian. So I do the same as a pedestrian as well.

IMO the problem isn't right on red itself, but rather that vehicles have to be in (and often completely over) the pedestrian crossing area to see oncoming vehicle traffic they have to yield to (at the distance required due to higher oncoming vehicle speeds). This encourages the behavior where drivers plan to have a single stop in that area, where they wait for an opening in vehicles to go - completely failing to take into account the possibility of having to stop before that area due to pedestrians actually using it. The situation is more like two separate stop and yields, and when drivers don't expect pedestrians they skip the first one.

The real issue are the road rage drivers who can't wait a minute and start honking behind you.

We all get it, we are all late now and then, but unless you are literally trying to catch a plane or a boat, in all likelihood you can sit your candy ass down and wait a minute.

It hasn't been a problem here in Maine, but Portland is an extremely relaxed place. The intersection outside my apartment is quite literally a cliche'd Indian street style free for all with a set of lights that offer suggestions, but people wait for pedestrians and nobody honks.

It's not allowed here in NYC. I've nearly gotten mowed down by people from the suburbs driving into the city not knowing it's illegal here on a few occasions. They also seem to get pissed and honk at me, as if walking around NYC isn't the default mode of transportation.

It isn't in much of Europe.

I'm nearby this intersection and there are 2 scrambles- this one and one about 2 blocks down closer to the university. There is very clear signage for cars that there are no turns allowed on red. I've crossed both intersections many times and rarely have I seen cars violating that rule. Perhaps they do but in my experience, they generally respect it.

Left turns on green (with no green arrow) are also pretty bad imo, as are right turns on green with no arrow. In both cases pedestrians are supposed to have right-of-way, but cars often don't respect it.

Unfortunately it seems useless/impossible to situationally forbid right-on-red, drivers just do it anyway. There are several intersections in Seattle with "no right on red" signs for various reasons (poor visibility, trolley intersection) and drivers just ignore them and make the right regardless. I frequently get angrily honked at by the car behind me when I am obeying the no right on red sign.

In the UK, it is very rare for a pedestrian crossing that is controlled by a button press to not completely stop traffic. The first time I was in North America as an adult, I realised that when on a crosswalk drivers will come sailing at you and will cross behind you as you cross over. That is illegal here. The drivers need to wait for the pedestrians to cross, even on "Zebra" crossings (which are the ones with no buttons and striped lines across the road.) The only exception to this is if there is a traffic island in the middle of the road, and then they are treated as 2 different crossings. But quite often those are staggered, so the pedestrian can't just walk out directly from one side to the other.

The trade off is that the pedestrian has pretty much no right of way anywhere but a crossing, and cars will drive at you (or at least not stop for you) if you try to cross somewhere that is not a crossing. Though "Jaywalking" is not a thing and you can actually cross where ever you like.

> I'll take 4-way stop any day since speeds are lower.

Exactly. People are, at worst, doing a "rolling stop" so they are still only going a few kph when they "didn't see" you.

> (The worst are SF's 2-way stops at intersections between equally-sized roads that show up randomly throughout Sunset. Worst of both worlds.)

As a cyclist, I've been yelled at by drivers for not stopping at that type of intersection, where they have a stop sign and I don't. People are working off of their personal version of the rules of the road, where they are always right.

> (The worst are SF's 2-way stops at intersections between equally-sized roads that show up randomly throughout Sunset. Worst of both worlds.)

If you think that's bad, Seattle has 0-way stops at intersections in residential. AFAIK, the rule is if you have a stop sign, you must stop; if you don't have a stop sign and other directions do, you have right of way and should proceed if safe; if you don't have a stop sign and neither does anyone else, treat it as an all-way stop. But from my observations, common behavior is to make it through the intersection about half way before realizing there are no stop signs and then just continue through because what else can you do at that point?

Here's a particularly challenging example: https://maps.app.goo.gl/gmuFk8jbo4GMJ1Ru7 where five roads come together with no signage.

> What you are describing has a major sampling bias: most pedestrian fatalities will be at large intersections with many lanes crossing each other. Those intersections are on busy streets where drivers are going fast and where there are an insane number of conflict points.

That's not what the point plot of the Toronto data shows. Many of our fatalities are on city streets with 40 or 50 km/h speed limits.

Anyway, I was responding to the OP who was claiming that they would rather deal with stop lights than 4 way stops. There is nothing that shows that 4 way stops are dangerous at all, let alone more dangerous than light controlled stops in similar situations.

Agreed, but I would not call an intersection with a dedicated turning lane a 4 way stop, or at least not a low traffic one.

I tend to agree with you. I regularly walk, sometimes up to 40 miles per month, in the suburban hellscape that is South Hill in Puyallup, WA. This is the land of major 4 lane arterials w/ turn-lanes and hundreds of unprotected two-way and four-way intersections. There’s almost no pedestrians, I’ll rarely meet other people on my way to work, and sometimes go the whole two miles without making eye contact with a single driver.

This article didn’t touch on it, but there’s another even scarier monster lurking out there. They’ve started to replace some of our larger intersections with these “Smart” traffic lights. Most drivers have a pretty well developed feel for the pattern traffic signals follow. These are pretty much random, adjusting the traffic flow based on some metrics. They use yield left turns with single direction flow and other tricks to try and control traffic. Since the light cycle doesn’t really follow any standard pattern, they’re also pretty much random when they’ll insert the protected pedestrian crossing into the cycle. It’s a death trap. There can be people waiting at a yield left turn which will be going to red, it will click on the pedestrian walk, and the opposing traffic will still be in full green, with drivers never coming to a stop. Add to that, if volume is heavy, you can stand there for 5 minutes or more waiting for a protected pedestrian crossing.

> ... the situational awareness of every driver who's about to get their turn is mostly absorbed in monitoring who's turn it is and who's going where.

Right, that's the intent. Drivers paying attention to their surroundings is the goal.

> So if you're a pedestrian and you don't time it right you could find yourself starting to cross right before someone wants to drive where you're crossing. Usually this is because you started walking before it was their turn...

You have the right of way!

> There's just so much less potential for conflict if there is a scheduled time when all the cars stop and then the walking happens.

How about a system where all cars are expected to stop all the time?

> This is what I mean about theory vs reality

> Sure, theoretically the rules say they shouldn't do that but that's not how reality works.

Do you have any evidence for this or are you just making this up as you type? Because it's a bit rich to be harping about "reality" otherwise.

A large body of research supports traffic calming measures for pedestrian safety and to increase driver awareness. A four-way stop intersection surrounded by intersections that also have stop signs (as indicated by the article) would fit that bill.

are you so engrossed in the driver's POV that you can't imagine an intersection without cars in it?