I make eye contact and just go, it’s why I have life insurance.

In Norway you don’t break stride as a pedestrian, so any number above 0 seconds is unusual at a zebra crossing. There’s always this “oops I’m not in Norway anymore” moment i have as i consider trying the same shit in other countries.

Tonight I had to wait twenty minutes for a black jeep to stop

Now I’m picturing this jeep taking 20 minutes to decelerate, all the while you’re just starring at them, wondering if they’re ever actually going to come to a complete stop.

In any eastern European country, I simply look the driver dead in the eye and pass, if they’re far enough to actually stop. However, whenever I visit Greece, especially Athens, not even the green light can save you. There is a running joke among Greeks and it goes along the lines of “stronger car wins”. Basically, if you have a fast car, you have priority on any intersections and pedestrian crossings, and the police do jack shit about it.

Man, I love Greece, beautiful country, amazing people, but with disfunctioning police and government in general.

In the US, all intersections are considered crosswalks and vehicles are supposed to stop, even if the intersection is not marked as a crosswalk. Most people ignore this.

Anyway, the longest I’ve ever waited was the length of time it took for the light to change, so about two minutes.

This unlocked a memory for me. In college my roommate and I took a late-night walk to a nearby diner, only a five minute walk from our dorm if jaywalking across one of the main streets in this town. Walking to the nearest crosswalk would more than double the trip, so patiently waiting for a break in traffic to safely cross was the norm.

On one weekend in particular, one of the other big colleges was having an event of some kind (homecoming or parents weekend, or some crap like that) that packed this town to the gills and turned the main street into a sea of cars as far as the eye could see in both directions. But don’t picture everything at a stand-still… the nearby traffic light must have been shut off (or turned to a blinking yellow) because the sea of cars was moving at a slow but steady pace with no break whatsoever.

Walking the extra few minutes west to the crosswalk, and then a few more back east to the restaurant, would have been the best bet, but our experience told us it would be wasteful because there must be a break in the traffic coming soon. There just had to be. As the minutes rolled by more we were joined by more dorm neighbors and other hopeful crossers, and we all stood there incredulous at just how perfectly bad this situation was.

Just estimating here… we absolutely waited more than 20 minutes, possibly 30. And it’s been so long I can’t remember the circumstances that finally let us cross. Also, yeah, this is a great example of the sunk-cost fallacy.

I live in a rural area. The most I’ve ever had to wait was during a lunch rush one day. About 5 to 10 minutes or so.

I was standing there at a marked crosswalk and cars just kept on zooming by. I was even gesturing to the drivers like “hey! I’m here, I need to cross!” And then a cop car started to come up and stopped for me…which then made all the assholes that didn’t stop for me stop for me on the other side of the road.

I don’t live in that town anymore. The last time I visited, a huge portion of the town has been gentrified now. It looks like Los Angeles now, but the area of the town and the infrastructure they have can’t support the amount of people living there.

6 generations of my family were born, raised and lived there. And now it’s ruined. My childhood home has been torn down and replaced with 4 houses on the lot it was on. That whole neighborhood is like that now.

Canadian here. In the province I grew up in vehicles yield to a pedestrian at a crossing (marked crosswalk or intersection).

Then I moved to Ontario for a co-op workterm. I was living with family and it was about a 30 minute walk to where I was working.

I was on my way home after my first day and crossing the street in a residential neighborhood when I stepped out in front of a lady who had stopped at a stop sign. I walked in front of the car and she beeped her horn. I thought we might be related since my cousins lived nearby so I looked at her and she was yelling at me in her car. I said “sorry” (I have no idea why) and as I turned to keep hustling she literally bumped me with her car before I could get out of the way (she had been creeping up). I was like wtf and just got out of there.

When I got home my cousin had a good laugh after I told him about this and he explained that pedestrians do not have the right of way (there are some towns and cities where they do, just not the one I was in).

I then proceeded to do lots of waiting at crosswalks.

Wtf??? 20 minutes? Omg.

For me: 30 seconds or so? Not long enough to count or remember. Had no idea this was a thing.

I’ve gone down the wrong street for like 10-15m to pretend I didn’t need to cross so the vehicle approaching wouldn’t need stop for me, then go back to cross after it passes lol

Sometimes it’s just easier to let them go through if they’re the only car than to wait for them to stop and then cross, but if you wait at the corner they stop.

I had the opposite experience once. In England you have to stop at crosswalks if there is someone there. I got stuck for a good 10-15 one time by a steady stream of pedestrians leaving some sort of touristy place.

Back in high-school there was a street I had to cross on my way to school and there were no traffic lights at that crosswalk. It was a high speed street and there were lights at major intersections before and after that crosswalk, so cars tended to just blow through it regardless of anyone waiting to cross.

The biggest problem was not waiting for a car to stop, it was a car stopping on the first lane, forcing me to start crossing, only for a car to come shooting through the second lane without wondering why the other is stopped. That’s why I learned to avoid using the crosswalk, it was the most dangerous place to cross the street. I chose a place without a crosswalk where I could cross when I saw that both lanes are safe.

A few seconds when the driver was not noticing me and just kept going. 99% of the time cars stop because that’s the rule.

Sometimes they stop even when there is plenty of time for them to go on without me slowing down. And that’s annoying because then I feel pressured to speed up. It’s like the people holding the door for you when you are still 20m away.

Jeez, where do you live?

I’m in Canada and have never had to wait even remotely that long in any city I’ve been a pedestrian in. It’s certainly a poorly followed law in that I’ll regularly see people not stop even if they had tons of time, but the majority of drivers do stop. I don’t think I’ve ever waited more than maybe a minute. I’d usually have to wait longer at a light than I would at an uncontrolled intersection or no-intersection crosswalk.

That said, the most annoying was in Saskatoon, where I went to university. There’s a road going up to the university where there’s a very long stretch with no controlled crosswalks until you get to the very end. I learned to just cross at the end (even if it meant needing to loop back) because crossing at an uncontrolled crosswalk in the middle was annoying. I would have often been on the top part of a T intersection and there were always parked cars, so being seen as trying to cross the road was the challenge there. But even then it usually wasn’t more than a minute and crossing from the other side was a lot easier because it was so much more obvious that you were waiting to cross. It was also a 2 lane road, but usually when one direction stops, drivers in the other lane figure it out.

…causing angry drivers (never referring to the ones that do stop for us) to yell that we’re invading privacy.

Except… they’re in public. In a vehicle with transparent windows. 🤷‍♂️