Hacker News Reader

Comment by 3seashells | Hacker News Reader

There is value in a society that upholds norms even if you don't agree with them, even if nobody is watching. I will wait in a ghost city for a green light, ridicule away.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-trust_and_low-trust_socie...

View on HN

While I too agree with norms in general, there is such a thing as common sense.

And common sense might tell you that waiting at a lone traffic light in the outskirts of a town in the early morning, sun rising, no car in sight for some hundred meters in each direction, does not add value to society?

It adds reliability, unconscious adherence to rules, a reduction of friction. I don't want people to jdrive in pedestrian only zones, just because nobody is up and about. Chaos is a mental taxation, ditracting from endavour.

There is no chaos to jaywalking because jaywalking should be the default. Only in non-pedestrian cities is jaywalking taxing.

I come from a city where people jaywalk(Stockholm). Jaywalking makes the city extremely walkable, and quite frankly I suspect it was designed with jaywalking in mind. It is obvious when someone is not from Stockholm - they wait for the signal.

I don't get the ease of jaywalking in many other large cities I've been - Zürich comes close. In the UK, even crossing at a green light feels dangerous.

I'd say waiting for the traffic light to turn green when there is no traffic nearby adds friction rather than reduces it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com