Phoenix Metro area has a lot of crazy drivers who are upset that you are in their road and that you have the audacity to get in my way.
I’ve had a few near misses as a pedestrian and I’ve been hit by a car while bicycling here.
I think Madison WI is safe for the exact opposite reason: pedestrians jaywalk continuously and drivers are on the look-out, and generally patient about it. The culture is one of slowing down when pedestrians are present and waiting for them. Or perhaps that is the just hazy lens of nostalgia, I’m currently afraid to cross the streets in Chicago until I’m sure no one is running the red.
I think a bit of both.
I think the culture goes a couple of ways. In Seattle, people don’t jaywalk, and cars get pissed off when someone randomly jumps into traffic. But when I was in New York with a couple of local friends, and they dragged us into traffic, they said, “Don’t worry, the cars expect it.”
I’m pretty sure that in Seattle, we still look both ways before crossing. At least, I do. But I also walk with the assumption that a car WILL hit me. Never trust cars! There’s never a guarantee they’ll see you.
I was actually in Boston once, wondering what the local culture was (I had an opportunity to jaywalk and wondered if I should take it.) I asked the people standing next to me, and they said, “We don’t know, we’re from Seattle!” I never did find out. So thank you for letting me know!
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What I don’t understand as a pedestrian in Seattle (I live here, but I’m not from here), is if I am waiting for an opportunity to cross (not at a crosswalk, just waiting for a gap), often cars will stop in the middle of the road and wave me across. I’d really rather they didn’t, I was planning to cross behind them. I’m also always bemused by the people who stand at totally empty crossings waiting for the light to turn for them.
OTOH, cars generally seem pretty useless at noticing people using crosswalks. I almost saw someone wiped out by a driver turning left just the other day.
Generally, though, I’d say if Seattle does well on this survey, it’s because it’s a pretty compressed city, with lots of interactions between pedestrians and cars. The ones that do badly are the horrid sprawly places like Houston where the city is seemingly designed for cars first and foremost.
Most drivers are still jerks to each other, though. Why is it so hard to thank someone for letting you merge?
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Personally I think its both. I know and have seen several people ticketed for jaywalking in Seattle. But both drivers and pedestrians are just too damn nice to each other and I don’t know where that comes from.
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Its so inefficient for them to stop like that! I’ve lived here for 10 years and it still bugs me so much when cars do this.
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Interesting. Would crossing the street on the spot around the start and end points be considered illegal? Around here (Northern Europe) that would be a perfectly legal way to deal with the situation - you do have an obligation to use a pedestrian crossing, but only if there is one nearby.
Miami is the only US city I have visited where I was actively afraid for my life while crossing the street on a crosswalk, and with the walk sign on.
I know that in Wisconsin if somebody leaves the curb, then you have to stop for them – it was usually heavily enforced up North where I grew up.
I’m sure the high percentage of elderly (both as drivers and pedestrians) can’t help either. I went to St. Petersburg once (also virtually sidewalk-free) to visit my wife’s elderly grandfather, and learned that he’d recently somehow wandered into a car dealership where a slimy salesperson promptly put him in a new Cadillac despite the fact that he was clearly senile and didn’t understand the basics of the transaction he was engaged in. Luckily in that case he had a family member looking out for him who immediately returned the car and threatened to report the dealer to the cops if they didn’t undo the contract, but who knows how often that kind of story plays out.
Slimy pushers of cheap automobiles are everywhere, and they’re pretty much scumbags in every case.
Also, the insurance companies love Florida. Since you pretty much have to drive to subsist if you’re not wealthy or retired, it’s a profitable situation for them because they can simply play the margins.
And then between rent and car insurance, the average wageslave barely has anything left for gas and food, much less anything else.
The thing is a false construct. Ft. Lauderdale is 30 miles away from Miami, and Pompano Beach even further. And neither city considers itself part of ‘Metro Miami’.
Interesting - I noticed that between our hotel and the Pike’s Place market (about 10 blocks), the lights were pretty well timed such that the next one was often switching to “walk” just as I arrived at an intersection, so cycling at very nearly the pace of a brisk pedestrian. Very effective for making walking feel relatively speedy.
In NYC, it’s not so much that drivers are on the lookout as that pedestrians are smarter and visibly attentive about how to jaywalk. As a driver, you know that that person isn’t about to blindly walk in front of your 30-mph vehicle mid-block, he’s timing his crossing to hit the gap behind you. As a pedestrian, you know that the driver knows this, so there’s none of this limp both-parties-come-to-a-stop nonsense (Good job, you just made us both wait.)
This is how to cross a street. Thing of beauty.
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