Here in Washington State, it’s law that pedestrians have the right of way at any intersection. Full stop. If someone on foot crosses at an intersection, anyone using the road with a vehicle must stop and let them pass. There’s not really any exception, and drivers oblige. This is a sensible law. It’s a breath of fresh air to me.
When I was a kid, one night we got dressed up nice (for us anyway) and went to see a showing of Casablanca at the Fox Theater in downtown Detroit. I pressed a button to cross the 6 lane intersection of Woodward Avenue. Three glowing yellow lights flashed and a sign above the road lit up: “CROSSWALK”. A friend pointed out the sign above the button, “Drivers do not stop for crosswalk.”
It was as official-looking as the rest of the signs around. In Detroit, the car was king. We looked both ways, but downtown was deserted in those days, so it didn’t matter whether we pressed the button or not.
Out for a run this afternoon, I was approaching a corner where my one lane street crosses a fairly busy two lane. Two boys of perhaps 7 years of age astonished me by not slowing down or even looking as they reached the corner and abruptly turned and stepped into the street in front of cars approaching at 30 miles an hour from both sides.
Do people teach their children to walk out in front of traffic? Probably not. In Driver’s Ed in Michigan, do they teach kids to ignore crosswalks and warning lights? Probably not. Kids do what their parents do, and parents do what everybody does, and around here and there, there’s nothing strange about the scene I described above, to a lot of people anyway. It feels weird to say it’s cultural, but if it feels natural to say, “that’s just what people do here,” then that’s what it is.
Culture isn’t fixed though. When I cross a street, or when I stop at an intersection, I make it a point to make eye contact with everyone at or approaching it. When I take the right of way, or when I cede it, there is no dispute, and no one thinks it’s strange. When I approach a corner on foot, and I see drivers slowing in the middle of the intersection, they don’t get angry when I look them I the eye and wave them through. I flaunt my cultural difference, and we tolerate it, because that’s another thing that we do around here in Seattle.
(Not that that’s a trivial thing – I’m privileged to say and do that!)
And okay, I feel a little weird writing about crossing the street. Until today though it had never crossed my mind something like this could be a cultural thing, but it turns out that anything can be culture. And in my culture, we’re into mutual acknowledgement and respect, and we make eye contact. Sometimes it’s uncomfortable because we were looking at our phone or blowing a light, but that’s okay, because in this culture we’re also into acknowledging that we make mistakes sometimes, and we own up to it.
We are also grateful that when faced with a person suddenly walking into the road, the default is to not run them over. Totally, totally grateful.