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Comment by Jacqued | Hacker News Reader

The most fascinating part of this for me is that people _actually_ pay attention to the green and red men at crossings, and even to crossings at all. I mean, sure, where I live children or older people who can't walk very fast wait for the green man but most regular folks just go and cross where and when they please.

I believe in Paris all of these are entirely automatic ; though there are buttons that are here to help the visually impaired by telling them where they are and if they can cross safely.

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Washington, DC, has many signals that have a countdown. Usually I figure on 3 seconds per lane at a moderate walking pace. Other times I will use my knowledge of how long the don't walk signal lasts before the crossing traffic gets the green light; if I don't know the intersection well, I won't cross on a don't walk.

All this of course assumes that there is traffic on the street I want to cross, which is true for most times of day, most places I walk.

Crossing against or without lights seems to depend very much on culture. In some parts of the US it is unremarkable, in others it is looked down on.

This is fine on quiet roads, but doesn't work in busy cities. If you tried to cross the road on my walk to and from work without waiting for the traffic to be stopped you'd get hit very quickly!

edit: perhaps you live in Paris? In which case I don't envy you having to cross the roads there!

I do. I think it's a cultural thing, people around here tend to not respect the rules very much, myself included.

I must admit this behavior is less frequent in the busiest streets in town but even there it's no rare sight.

In France jaywalking doesn't exist in law, and cars are always required to give way to pedestrians crossing or looking to cross. The only thing to be aware of is, if you cross less than 50 meters away from a crossing, and there is an accident, the driver's insurance may not be liable.

> This is fine on quiet roads, but doesn't work in busy cities.

I guess I can claim to have lived in Shanghai for a span of (not many) years, and I have to dispute this. People will just walk out into the middle of a busy street, making lane-by-lane progress much like Frogger if they have to. They do it because the only real alternative is not crossing the street at all. When I was working at an international school here, it was common (and, in my view, completely justified) for new arrivals to want help crossing the street. But the fatality rate is quite low. ;)

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