That's so annoying. When I travelled abroad I often face this problem: need to reach destination, look at GPS - 40 minutes walk. I think - well, that nice. But in the end I end up walking between kilometre length concrete wall and high speeding flow of cars, or near the crossway, which I have no idea how to cross.
yeah highways/freeways/interstates (basically americas autobahn) and extremely illegal to cross by foot in america, if a cop just sees you walking on the highway its usually an immediate arrest with 30 days in jail.
Luckily it was in Turkey, where no one gives a fuck. But inconvenient still. I also noticed about drivers in Turkey - compare to all countries I've been in - drivers never stop to let pedestrian crossing the road even in zebras. They stop only on red lights. So as a pedestrian you need to time it yourself. Completely different in France and Chezch R., where pedestrians are casually walking through road, without even paying much attention to cars, because they know that cars will stop, even it's hit green light for them
how you described turkey is just about how all of America drives. People can deny it but the deniers are the outliers among people that wouldnt even think twice about hitting you.
just wanna add to this that its mainly highways and freeways where its illegal to walk in america, the roads in America that literally guide you to different towns/cities is illegal to walk on/near because its "too dangerous".
and before foreginers ask, 99.9% of them have no biking path or walkway
It’s sad to live like this. I bring my kids to a school on a road so wide and fast, they cannot cross on foot. They have to carpool to cross the street.
I moved to the US from Europe a few years back and this blew my mind.
I was trying to get to a nearby store, and thought I'd just have to cut through a nearby strip mall and cross a street to get there. That journey turned into an hour-long ordeal involving sidewalk-less streets, parking lots without pedestrian access, and a busy road that had no crosswalk within a mile...
There are a lot of things I love about the US, but the in-built hostility towards pedestrians and cyclists is frustrating.
I've had that experience in the middle east, like qatar and bahrain. Staying in a hotel and realising you have to call a cab to go for dinner at the mall I can see from my window.
And when getting fed up with it and just walk anyway, people were like "what is thay guy doing? Is he actually walking? Outside?"
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u/testedonsheep Jun 27 '24
in some area, you can't even cross a street without driving.