This happens virtually every single day. Drivers in Chicago would rather commit vehicular manslaughter than wait 5 seconds for someone to cross.
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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.
If we lived in a sane country, this person would have their license taken away.
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
A car stopping for no reason at a crosswalk? Guess I should drive by fast
Get out of the danger zone quickly
Yes a lot ppl don’t care about bright glow in dark signs that say ppl are allowed to cross… it’s sad
What do they think an already stopped car is doing there? Straight to jail.
Is that legal in the US? Here you have to stop if you see that another car has
Yeah that driver is clearly not paying attention to the road
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.
“Surely this person is stopped for no reason and not because someone is in the marked crosswalk.”
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
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.
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.
Even in Chicago drivers are required to yield to pedestrians at marked crosswalks.
From that video and given that not one but two cars passed when pedestrians were legally had priority to cross (for one car on the right, then the one on the left) plus the speed of the car on the left, clearly de facto stopping for pedestrians at crosswalks is optional.
Laws are only requirements if they’re enforced, otherwise they’re in practice only advices.
Set up a brick container on both sides holding hall passes.
Holding
hall passesbricks
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.
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.
Laws without actual enforcement and stiff penalties are the same as no law.
Random enforcement with large fines is great at getting people to obbey the rules of the road “just in case I might get caught” - it’s sad but you can’t relly on people doing the right thing even if by not doing so they’re seriously endangering the lives of others (like the second car in that video).
Worse, if at first it’s only the assholes (a small fraction of people) breaking the rules and endangering others by doing so, if they’re not punished by it eventually the “neutrals” (the bulk of people, who are neither inherently understanding towards others nor assholes) will do the same as the assholes since they see them getting away with doing the selfish thing and by that point it’s only a minority of drivers doing what they’re supposed to be doing.
I’ve lived in several countries in the EU and now live in Portugal, the rules of the road being pretty much the same in all of Europe and yet there is way (WAY!) more reckless life-endangering rule-breaking on the road like this in Portugal than in the Netherlands and Britain. My impression is that the reason is that in the other two countries you’re way more likely to get caught (not least because they actually have cameras at traffic signs and other places), the police are actually strict about enforcement rather than forgiving “just this once” (only next time around that driver is caught it’s a different police officer so it’s “just this once” again) and the fines are stiff.
I remember when I first emigrated out from Portugal and went to live in The Netherlands, having the same kind of driving habits as the typical Portuguese, so I did the typical Portuguese thing at a traffic sign in The Netherlands (yellow light gets treated as “accelerate” and the first few seconds of “red” are treated as “can still pass”) and a week later got a fine on the post because there was a camera there, so I phoned them to appeal and the answer was “Rules are rules: crossing one second after it turned red or crossing one minute after it turned red are both crossing a red light” so I had to pay the fine.
Lets just say that my driving in The Netherlands quickly lost all the funny business habits from Portugal.
This shit happens because it’s allowed to happen.
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.
Yeah, I really love these laws, and I follow them religiously when I have to be drive, but unfortunately very few Chicago drivers know/follow them. I live on a busy street near some pretty major tourist attractions, and we have a lot of out of town drivers so it’s really hit or miss, ahem.
I find I have to make sure I have caught the driver’s attention in some way before I venture in into the crosswalk, at least then if they hit me it’s out of choice not inattentiveness. Even a driver who thinks I’m breaking the law by crossing should stop if they see me in enough time.
So it’s pointless then.
Literally they exist for one situation…
person walks onto street
“I’m gonna hit that idiot. Oh, dang! They’re on a crosswalk so I’m not allowed to.”
That’s the logic.
Totally off-topic: the Viofo A119 Mini v2 is one of the best dashcams ever made (speaking as another user of it!). Good stuff.
Also, that driver is insane.
My area has a bunch of these crosswalks on six lane 40 MPH / 65 km/h streets and I never dare to use them.
We’ve got one that’s 45 mph, well known for pedestrian hits. Runs through poor housing areas where people tend to walk to places. But there are lights and crosswalks, so it’s got that over this place.
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.
Y’all need some crossing bricks.
