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Comment by pinephoneguy | Hacker News Reader

Someone in Indiana honked at me for using a crosswalk yesterday thinking I was supposed to yield to them for some reason. I think people from rural areas and suburbs just aren’t used to driving in smaller streets.

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I and colleagues used to have to cross a moderately busy street in Orange County, CA. A marked crossing section a block from the train station. I was routinely honked at and vehicles would swerve around. I started carrying a strobe flashlight and would glance it towards fast moving cars. This usually slowed them down but pissed them off more. Not blinding them mind you, just a flash. Sooooo put out that they will have to slow for up to 20 seconds.

Can you show me this crosswalk on Streetview? I'm trying to get an idea of the kinds of environments people are talking about in this thread (I'm non-American).

Here is the exact intersection. It looks safer than it is (or was, I've since moved far away).

https://www.google.com/maps/@33.7878268,-117.8588114,3a,75y,...

That doesn't look safe at all. Five lanes! And you have to cross them all in one go, with no signaling!!! My goodness. Such a thing would never be constructed here (UK)*. There would be, at minimum, a protected pedestrian island in the middle, so that in crossing you only need to look in one direction at a time. Almost always a set of pedestrian-controlled traffic lights too. In the Netherlands they might even go a step further and put in a continuous sidewalk (i.e. the surface the pedestrians walk on remains at the same level as the sidewalk, so that cars have to rise onto it like a speedbump).

Here is an example comparable to yours: a 4-lane major road intersecting perpendicularly with a 2-lane minor road. Pedestrians have controlled crossings across the major part, and protected islands so they never have to cross more than two lanes in one go:

https://goo.gl/maps/MYbcyPgQZD1PMAL69

This design is standard everywhere. And it isn't even optimal (it doesn't accommodate cyclists very well).

*If you searched high and low across the country you might find a counterexample or two, but the fact remains that this kind of junction is thoroughly alien to the British built environment.

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