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When teaching my kids to cross the road, I tell them to look for oncoming cars and to make sure the driver can see them (by checking where they're looking) instead of trying to judge if there's sufficient space to cross safely.

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What I find interesting is that this varies by country. In some countries, making eye contact with a driver before crossing in front of their car is the right thing to do. In other countries, the best way to cross a road is to pretend that you haven’t seen the on-coming traffic, and to step into traffic without looking at the drivers...

Totally agree. You have to heed your location.

Here in SF, if you look the driver in the eye, you have yielded the right of way to him. Even though state law gives the pedestrian the right of way when they are in a crosswalk.

Speaking as someone who lives in SF, I have never experienced what you describe.

I certainly had plenty of drivers casually and negligently drive through crosswalks occupied by pedestrians (done it myself too when I shouldn’t have)

Or did you mean the “eye contact yields right of way to the vehicle” bit?

I mean the "eye contact yields right of way to the vehicle". In my experience as a pedestrian any time I make eye contact with a vehicle they wave me through, even if my intention was to let them go first.

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