How do we make drivers yield to pedestrians at crosswalks?

Taiwan Living in Taiwan
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Motorcycle gets rear ended when slowing for pedestrian on crosswalk over by Feng Chia night market. I’m not surprised. In all my time around that area I’ve never seen anyone yield for pedestrians at this spot. The only way to cross is there’s a big gap and you hurry across. As is it’s basically a trap. Often see people get halfway then get stuck in the middle because no one yields to them. There’s a quite a few uncontrolled junctions in that section of road…good luck crossing any of them unless you have a big gap. 6 uncontrolled pedestrian crossings before you get to a controlled junction on either end.

Also funnily enough the cammer who recorded the video…you can tell they turned too early and crossed the double yellow.

Even when the news goes there almost no one stops for pedestrians. Somehow though they were able to record a bus and a car stop for a few pedestrians. I’ve never seen that before in many years of being around the Feng Chia area.

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Another pedestrian killed on a crosswalk. Last week a pedestrian, a 28yr. old lady, in Zhonghe was hit by a taxi while crossing on the crosswalk.

The ETToday article below has the dashcam footage from the taxi that hit the pedestrian.

After 8 days of being in the hospital for emergency treatment she has died. The taxi driver is in his 60s and is hearing impaired with a hearing aid. After getting bumped onto the hood she ended up falling of the hood and ended up under the taxi…
Obviously the husband is quite heartbroken.

This looks to be a crosswalk that has been pulled back from the sidewalk. Seems there should be ample room for drivers to clearly see any pedestrians.

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Driver fucking loses it at a scooter rider. Only thing scooter did was put his hand out like “what…?” kind of gesture since there were people crossing on the street so have to stop. Driver flings open his door and starts assaulting the scooter rider from the middle of the road all the way over to the stalls. His wife immediately runs out to try and pull him back but he keeps on assaulting the scooter rider. Chiayi

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Yeah the real macho man right there showing off his wife how manly man he is. Great

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Not that anything justifies those actions, but I’d like to point out what a chaotic clusterfuck that road is. Should be closed to cars, maybe scooters too.

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Welcome to zhonghe. This road is actually not as worse compared to where i live. I always wonder why this area isnt covered by news ever.

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With how fast she ran out after her husband it looks like it’s not the first time this has happened.

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In kaosiung there are a few areas that get this way around dinner time as everyone parks illegally in front of this shop, drive over to that shop, the vendors take over what sidewalks there are and encroach on the roads, but these are still regular streets that people use to get home after work and the whole thing is a slow moving train wreck.

I try to avoid those areas at those times, but sometimes not successful

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Not sure how it is in Kaoshiung but in Tainan there was one street in the news. The restaurants pay a little money to the city and they get to use most of the sidewalk for their business at night when they open. So for that case it’s not illegal.

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Fine, but then the scooters and cars park in front, and pedestrians are forced on to the road, and there is no way for traffic to flow smoothly and without incident

If they have special rules for those streets, they can block access to vehicles (cars and larger, at least)
:man_shrugging:

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Only if drivers care to look for pedestrians. They do not. Also, it looks like the taxi accelerates after hitting the person. Not only the taxi driver didn’t care to watch out for pedestrians, but it was unable to react properly after an impact. A trully “professional” driver.

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So many wrongdoings…

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This is the latest news now. Mother crossing the street with a baby stroller and she pulls out a phone and points it like she will record a car that the media said already stopped to yield for the pedestrian very early!

Looking at the video the car takes a while to come to a full stop. Looks like the windows are heavily tinted so can’t see the driver. Also…so what if she pulls out her phone. It’s the only way I’ve found that forces drivers to suddenly see me. I’m sure she doesn’t want to take a chance given how little people and govt. care about a bunch of little kids and their moms being run over.

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Media: Pedestrians are paranoid!

Reality: Pedestrians being killed, injured and harassed by motorists at every step.

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Mom wasn’t actually on the pedestrian crossing in the beginning! Looks like the driver was actually travelling at a slow speed and preparing to stop for pedestrians, assuming he/she could actually see them.

If the driver can still see out they can always invest in one of these delights! New excuse!

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I don’t see anything wrong with either of them. She cut the corner a bit, maybe the easement required that, the car could have stopped earlier but was slow and stopped before the lines. As for her camera, ok in this case it wasn’t necessary but maybe that is only because she had the phone. If she wasn’t recording, would the car have gotten closer? We can’t know, but the sheer number of close calls and dead/injured pedestrians justifies a mother’s caution.

But after she passes the two idiots that start dancing in the middle of the intersection are the kind of pedestrian that annoy me. If you’re going to cross the road, cross it. If you’re not sure what you’re doing, figure it out on the sidewalk

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Is that motorcyclist (the guy who was hit from behind in the video above) somehow at fault? It looked to be that this is 100% the idiot car guy’s fault. Did I miss something?

Guy

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It was more a way to express how everything is f***ed up.

First we take a look at the environment:

No sidewalks, 4 lane stroad, zebra crossing without traffic lights (on a 4 lane stroad) nor any other kind of protective infrastructure for pedestrians. It is even diagonal, FFS.

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Vehicles are supposed to stop before the white stop lines and cannot stop within the yellow grid. This makes a disconnection between the zebra crossing and the stopping action. It increases the distance so it reduces the reaction time for motorists from seeing the pedestrian to the place they are supposed to stop.
Free for all chaoting lightning also makes more difficult to spot pedestrians, and everything else.

We can keep going all day long finding problems in this mess of an environment. Like, for example, why it is allowed to change lanes right in front of an intersection/zebra crossing. And so on.

Car driver is an idiot who changes lanes (they are wrongly allowed to do it, though) to eat someone else’s ass. Car has tinted windows so the driver can’t see shit. Clearly the driver doesn’t have the reaction time of a race driver. So yes, car driver is 50% at fault. The other 50% belongs to the infrastructure.

Now, the motorcycle rider didn’t behave safely. I am going to assume he saw the pedestrian just before he started braking, and that he didn’t see the pedestrian sooner because of the chaotic environment. While he was trying to do the right thing by stopping and yielding, he didn’t have the time and distance to do it safely and this is also something that motorists have to evaluate: whether it’s safe to do an emergency braking or not. In this case, it is not only dangerous for him being on a motorcycle, but it can also be dangerous for the pedestrian due to the chain reaction a crash can start.

My guess is that right now, many Taiwanese motorists are not thinking about their own safety or the safety of others (pedestrians). The latter is very obvious because, when did they care? They are thinking about the 6000NT fine instead; and this is not the right mentality.

I’m not going to say anything about the pedestrian, although he is probably a terrible motorist too. I just want to say that I can’t remember the last time I tried to cross a multilane stroad in a non-dead neighbourhood.

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And why is there no “pedestrian crossing ahead” warning sign?

We have these signs in Taiwan, and they are supposed to be found at uncontrolled crossings, but I rarely see them.

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Last week I’m turning a corner, and there are a couple of guys just on the other side of the zebra. Alright, close enough, I slow to a stop. And of course, they don’t finish crossing the street to the sidewalk but instead start walking down the road… to a car which is parked illegally on the road at a red line a few metres down. A bit further down, on the side of the street they needed to visit, there were actualy car spaces empty.

The bad motorists and the bad pedestrians are often the same people. Fortunately I didn’t get bit from behind whole waiting for them to sort themselves out, as my ass was still on a busy road

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This part we simply don’t know.

The rest of your post is impressive though.

Guy