This happens virtually every single day. Drivers in Chicago would rather commit vehicular manslaughter than wait 5 seconds for someone to cross.
This happens virtually every single day. Drivers in Chicago would rather commit vehicular manslaughter than wait 5 seconds for someone to cross.
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.
A car stopping for no reason at a crosswalk? Guess I should drive by fast
yeah, I had a guy losing his mind once trying to wave me through a construction zone with an active bulldozer going because you know, he stopped for me, and I’m like pointing at the bulldozer and shaking my head at him. guy was really mad I wasn’t getting crushed under a machine with no visability actively doing work that involved not looking for pedestrians behind a sign that says ‘‘don’t even walk over here’’
Wave of death is one of the most aggravating things to me when I’m on a bike. Motorists violating their own right of way to wave me through think they’re being courteous, but really they’re peer pressuring me into a potentially lethal mistake. Sometimes you really have to fight with them visually, hands gesticulating that they have to go first, to get them to understand that you refuse to take their “courtesy”.