genec

Do a self test. Stand in a crosswalk at the side of the road and see who stops. (In CA it is a law...) keep tabs... try different areas of town... upscale, near colleges, blue collar areas.

Report back... your test is as valid as their test.

My own observations, based on having lunch at a corner restaurant, near the office, and at a busy corner tends t support their observation... and expensive trucks fit the profile of "expensive vehicles." But hey, I have observation bias, no doubt... I probably only noticed the more expensive vehicles and assumed they would not stop.

But what do you see?

FiftySix

Virtually no one stops their car here for someone standing at the side of the road at a crosswalk. And if a pedestrian enters a crosswalk while car traffic has the green light and the pedestrians have a "don't walk" indicator, the pedestrians will get ears full of car horn or worse.

I remember back in the early '90s I was visiting the beach cities south of Los Angeles and was absolutely shocked how people would just cross in front of moving traffic coming down the road. Lots of trust or arrogance to believe that cars would see them in time or come to stop. Of course, I found out that was a legal thing to do there no matter how dangerous.

Here, the most similar thing would be people walking into a grocery store. For whatever reason, women will walk right out in front of moving traffic while men are less likely to do so. I quizzed my wife on this years ago as she is one of the one's that will walk right in front of moving traffic. Her response was, "they'll stop". 4000 lbs. versus 120 lbs. Sure, have faith in that.

tomato coupe

The title of the article is very misleading. Here are the mean values of the cars that yielded, and those that didn't:

Cars that yielded: $5,920
Cars that didn't yield: $7,820

wphamilton

There are apparently "problem" intersections which are worse than others. On one I used to cross on the way to the local store, nobody stopped, ever. They'd just blast through the right-on-red without slowing, to bluff you out of the crosswalk.

The same intersection was far safer on a bike, acting as traffic. In fact, after my first crossing as a cyclist I never again attempted to cross on foot. It makes me skeptical of generalizing these observations.

genec

Oh, I agree there are problem intersections... and there are easy intersections. But frankly, if you don't believe the "data" presented... run the experiment yourself. Try different intersections, different times of the day, use different pedestrians. Collect the data, and then summerize.

It's interesting, some of the basic concepts we accept as cyclists are based on some pretty scant data. And quite a bit of it is based on a sample size of one... "well it worked for me..."