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this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2023
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Showerthoughts
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Serious question: are there places in the world that have marked pedestrian crossings (crosswalks), but vehicles DON’T have to give way to pedestrians?
In Prague, pedestrians officially have the right of way, but most drivers don't seem to know that.
Yeah, unfortunately that seems pretty normal in a lot of places.
Yes, Germany.
They have two types of pedestrian crosswalks. One of them is the standard "zebra crossing", where the whole crosswalk is maked with white stripes and there pedestrians have right of way.
The other one just has just dashes at the sides of the crossing, and here pedestrians have no right of way. But if these are present (same with the other type) pedestrians are not allowed to cross the road for iirc 50 meters left or right of the crossing. So it essentially turns the road left and right of the crossing into a "no crossing allowed" zone.
They do this at traffic lights, so that if the light doesn't work pedestrians don't have right of way. And sometimes they just do it to annoy pedestrians, because it's car-country Germany and fuck pedestrians or something.
Not long ago in Poland a pedestrian would have the right of way only after they were already on the crossing. So if you would get killed on a crosswalk that would be classified as intrusion and the driver would go scot-free
In most states in the US, if the automobile traffic has the green light and the pedestrian traffic has a "don't walk" sign, then the pedestrians are supposed to yield to the cars.
Sorry, I guess I should have more specific - if it’s a signalled pedestrian crossing, of course the signals need to be followed. I was wondering in the context of a crossing that only has markings, but no signals.
It looks like it changed last year, but the UK. The law was previously that pedestrians in a crosswalk should wait until it was clear to start crossing, as opposed to cars should stop if someone is waiting to cross.
I remember in NJ USA as a kid being told that cars didn't have to stop at zebra crossings. I don't know if it was true, I wasn't skeptically investigating things when I was 7.
The best I could find was this blog talking about how the rules say they should stop, but they frequently don't: https://www.expataussieinnj.com/understanding-road-rules-for-pedestrians-in-nj/
So maybe the rules are one way, but the locals don't follow it so you can't treat the rule as being in place.