Looks like this crossing needs a "crossing brick". A brick pedestrians carry from one end to the other, with the implication that they get to deliver it though the windshield of any driver who doesn't respect the crossing.
Wat? No pedestrian/car traffic lights for the crossing on a busy road!? As a European, only the shittiest undeveloped places would have something like that!
Welcome to the USA!
No light, no stop sign, only the requirement to stop for pedestrians and not even a light for them. And, since it's Chicago, I'm guessing that road always has cars on it.
I would never use that crosswalk.
There should be a light there. But, more than that, since it's a residential street with a park, the speed limit should be 25MPH, and there's no reason for it to be three lanes. Furthermore, that red car turning left needs to look past the trees and wall in the median on the right, and account for six lanes of traffic, again without a light.
I'm guessing that red in the road near the crosswalk is paint, but it might as well be blood.
Set up a brick container on both sides holding hall passes.
Even in Chicago drivers are required to yield to pedestrians at marked crosswalks.
In my country, the black and white cars in the right lane would also risk losing their licenses on the spot
This is called "the wave of death".
When a road is two+ lanes, and the closer lane stops to wave a pedestrian through; the other lanes often cannot see that there's a pedestrian at all because the car is blocking the view. They just see a car stopped for no reason.
If you're a pedestrian, be extremely careful crossing the road in this highly specific scenario. My stomach dropped when I saw the person not watching where they're going. Obviously the car is in the wrong for assuming there are no pedestrians at a pedestrian crossing… but this is an extremely common mistake when driving.
the other lanes often cannot see that there's a pedestrian at all because the car is blocking the view. They just see a car stopped for no reason.
If other car stop at crosswalk, assume person walking cross. How hard can it be? One of the first things I learned in driving school is "if ball, then child!" and this is the same.
Yes, easy solution if your brain is functioning at all.
The problem is that, while you are correct, in case of the driver's mistakes is the pedestrian that pays the steepest price.
So while we can acknowledge that some drivers are indeed braindead, it's important for pedestrians to use the brain for both of them
It’s not hard. But everybody makes mistakes which is why roads are so dangerous.
Being in the right morally won’t save your life when crossing the street. You still have to look both ways and wait to check that drivers see you.
A car stopping for no reason at a crosswalk? Guess I should drive by fast
Wave of death is one of the most aggravating things to me when I'm on a bike. Motorists violating their own right of way to wave me through think they're being courteous, but really they're peer pressuring me into a potentially lethal mistake. Sometimes you really have to fight with them visually, hands gesticulating that they have to go first, to get them to understand that you refuse to take their "courtesy".
yeah, I had a guy losing his mind once trying to wave me through a construction zone with an active bulldozer going because you know, he stopped for me, and I'm like pointing at the bulldozer and shaking my head at him. guy was really mad I wasn't getting crushed under a machine with no visability actively doing work that involved not looking for pedestrians behind a sign that says ''don't even walk over here''
It used to be common in Poland where pedestrians didn't have priority when crossing the street, they had to wait for a car to stop and let them cross (of course they had priority once on the crosswalk). There were couple of attempts to change this but some politicians claimed that it will cause more accidents because it will be confusing, people will think they have priority, drivers will not stop... Finally, couple of years ago it passed and... it just worked, accidents were down.
Not giving pedestrians priority when crossing the street is beyond stupid.
What do they think an already stopped car is doing there? Straight to jail.
Yeah that driver is clearly not paying attention to the road
Is that legal in the US? Here you have to stop if you see that another car has
....chicago?
Bruh... this is common in EVERY single car-centric municipality. I walk in toronto, a whole different country , and THIS is a daily occurrence for me. Even when I get the license plates ofo the people who do it and report them.... nothing happens....
And as far as Im concerned THIS is exactly what most people want, chicago or toronto, since there hasnt been a subtantial action substantiated by people to change this ... so....
You'd be beaten to a fine pulp if you acted like this in Europe.
Meanwhile, in Asia where lots of countries have a different system/culture, the cars would not go that fast when passing by a pedestrian. The idea is basically that pedestrians just walk into the road and the cars adjust their speed to allow the pedestrians to pass.
You’d be beaten to a fine pulp if you acted like this in Europe.
I've been to southern Europe, you're fooling no one. Europeans are not immune to the empathy-dissolving powers of the automobile. Only meaningful infrastructure and enforcement fixes this, and the places in Europe where motorists are reasonable have those things. They didn't get there through mob beat-downs.
Yeah I'm in Portland where 1) We have a reputation domestically for being ahead of the curve on urban design and 2) State law says that cars must always wait for pedestrians at any crossing, signaled or painted or otherwise. But it all falls apart as soon as reality hits the road: If the speed limit is over 25MPH, it's likely that a driver won't stop for you unless you're already in the road. And if a road has two lanes forget it. Drivers see someone stopped at a crosswalk in the next lane over and just think "Why did this dipshit stop their car in the middle of the lane?" before blowing past them like the car in the video. Cars remove the ability for humans to see each other as peers and it is lethal, if there are cars there needs to be forcible traffic control measures that don't rely on good will alone. We need traffic real signalling, not virtue signalling.
"Surely this person is stopped for no reason and not because someone is in the marked crosswalk."
Edit: See edit at the end. I was working on incomplete information.
Looked it up, and here's what Illinois traffic law has to say:
A driver must come to a complete stop (and yield):
- When a pedestrian is in a marked crosswalk [notably, this one is marked as a "zebra crossing"].
- On school days, when children are in close proximity to a school zone crosswalk.
So you technically don't have to stop until a regular pedestrian steps into the crosswalk, but once they decide to enter, you have to stop your shit.
Additionally:
A driver must yield:
- When a pedestrian is in an unmarked crosswalk on the driver’s side of the roadway, and there are no traffic control signals.
- When making a turn at any intersection.
- When making a lawful turn on a red light after coming to a complete stop.
- After coming to a complete stop at a stop sign or flashing red signal at an intersection.
- When a pedestrian enters a crosswalk before the traffic light changes.
- When a pedestrian walks with a green light, to a “walking person” symbol or to a “walk” signal.
- When a pedestrian leaves or enters a street or highway from an alley, building, private road, or driveway.
- When a pedestrian enters an intersection with a flashing yellow arrow.
- To a person with disabilities, including physical, hearing and visual disabilities.
Only the last person was driving illegally, but I think the other people who didn't stop were being dicks.
Edit: I dug further (i.e. into the compiled statutes and not just a handbook) and found more:
Whenever any vehicle is stopped at a marked crosswalk or at any unmarked crosswalk at an intersection to permit a pedestrian to cross the roadway, the driver of any other vehicle approaching from the rear shall not overtake and pass such stopped vehicle.
So actually, the second-to-last car was violating traffic law too. The other two could be debated given the middle car wasn't yet "stopped", but it sure was still a diiiiick move.
Interesting. In California you are required to stop if someone else stops at a crosswalk for this exact reason. I'm surprised Illinois doesn't have such a law.
I response to your comment, I looked in the compiled statutes, and such a law exists. I guess it just isn't mentioned in the handbook.
625 ILCS 5/11-1002(d), which I quoted in an edit.
Perfect example of how legislation doesn't really make roads safer when the designs directly encourage the illegal behaviour and there's not enough police to enforce it everywhere.
Narrow the intersection to one lane, elevate the crosswalk to sidewalk height, block parking two car lengths before the crosswalk, and turn the beg buttons into hard-countdown crossing buttons.
Since pedestrians have right-of-way at crosswalks, we should be designing the crosswalks to reflect that. Otherwise we'll continue seeing this kind of behavior from drivers.
If we lived in a sane country, this person would have their license taken away.
It's a pity the footage cant be used to report the driver and have them. prosecuted: (
I love watching Cycling Mikey in London, UK reporting endless drivers he records and the salty tears from drivers reported for breaking the road rules there.
It's enraging how he ends up stopped in traffic less than a block away. He's still close enough that you could run up and kick the side of his car
My area has a bunch of these crosswalks on six lane 40 MPH / 65 km/h streets and I never dare to use them.
When I'm a pedestrian, I pretty much ignore right of way and treat crossing more like frogger (unless it's at a traffic light), though generally prefer taking moments where I can cross either fully or to a raised divider. It won't really help me if some driver that hits me gets in legal trouble.
While driving, I actively try to avoid hitting pedestrians, using various tools at my disposal, such as my eyes (useful for seeing that there's a pedestrian I shouldn't hit), my feet (my car is equipped with a pedal that converts my momentum into heat, as well as another one that disengages the motor so that it doesn't add more momentum back in, allowing me to slow down or even stop to avoid), and my arms (my car is also equipped with a device that allows me to convert the direction of my momentum to a different direction, which can work as a last line of defense when avoiding hitting pedestrians, though honestly it's a pretty big fuck up to even need to do that because there aren't many other options for directions on city streets). I also chose my car with "good visibility of things around me" as one of the features I wanted it to have.
Though it helps that the crosswalks here that aren't at intersections have lights that flash rapidly only when someone presses the button to cross. It's probably safer to cross at these than it is at an intersection due to varying levels of attention to pedestrians while turning, especially if it's a left on a busy street that doesn't offer many opportunities to make that turn.
Pedestrian bridges are nice whether I'm walking or driving. Assuming they don't collapse, that is, in which case they aren't very nice.
having a 20 mph speed limit or lower in urban areas frequented by pedestrians, people in wheelchairs & walkers,strollers etc, bicyclists, (anyone not incased in tons of hard metal) wanting to use & enjoy the streets of their city with minimal fear, would be a good start on addressing manic car drivers who don’t have the time to slow down or yield to anyone or anything in their way
and some method of enforcing traffic laws, which seems to be lacking in most places these days in the USA, anyway
Chicago is the most pedestrian-hostile place I've ever visited, it's insane, and that counts Houston, which doesn't even bother to have sidewalks at crosswalks at all in most of the city. In Chicago, they literally try to hit you, you'll hear them hit the gas as you step into the crosswalk.
I don't trust crosswalks at all. I'll just wave the cars past and wait for no cars.
All the car waiting for them did is create a blind spot.
Why the fuck is there even a crossing without lights on a 3 lane road? America's roads are all kind of fucked up.
That's what I thought. Rarely I'll see one on a two-lane, usually they are set up with lights. This six-lane avenue? That's likely getting an overpass, lights as minimum.
This is road engineering so stupid, I wouldn't have believed it were a real thing, but here's a video.
This is why when I arrive at a designated pedestrian crossing that has more then one lane without a center pedestrian island I stop back about 1 car length, especially so when I see someone ready, or signalling they will be crossing.
It allows pedestrians, and cars behind me (in other lanes) to see each other, and should allow a little more reaction time for either to stop.
Also people in cars constantly forget kids are just as likely to run across a crosswalk. And at one point those kids might be their kids.
I saw a guy get hit in a similar situation once. One car stopped for him in the right lane and he walked out into the street. Oncoming guy in the left lane didn't know why the guy in the other lane stopped (It was dark and he likely couldn't see the pedestrian). Dude got creamed, the car was probably doing ~35-40 mph. He went flying and landed on his neck. My wife who's a nurse stopped to help him, and make sure he didn't move until EMS got there because he could have broken his neck. The fucked up part is the car that hit him didn't stop. We gave our contact info for the police report, and never heard about it again. I hope he made it out with no permanent injuries.
Y'all need some crossing bricks.
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