>> Oh, it is definitely a huge cultural problem. In the US, many drivers will ignore the existence of pedestrians altogether.
Strange, because most likely the majority of drivers also walk at least a short distance around the same cities they drive into.
In the US in particular, eyballing the number of cars and the number of pedestrians in images of places like New York etc that I've seen, it's very hard to believe that there's a clear line separating all those people walking about from all those people who drive cars, other than the specific time of day they do one or the other.
So you'd think that being careful around pedestrians should come naturally to most drivers, if nothing else because they'd want other drivers to be careful around them as pedestrians also.
You have to remember that the vast majority of the US is nothing like NYC in terms of walkability or population density, and in the city I live in (suburb of a major Texas city) there is literally nothing within walking distance of my house except a school, and some of the big streets don't even have sidewalks.
Many drivers are commuters from the suburbs who drive in the morning, park inside or very near their office building, and drive home in the evening. The downtowns of many US cities are completely dead after "working" hours.
>In the US in particular, eyballing the number of cars and the number of pedestrians in images of places like New York etc that I've seen
You sound like a non-American. Let me give you some advice: take everything you've ever seen about NYC, and file that in a different place in your brain's filing system away from your file labeled "America". It does not represent America in any way when talking about cars, walkability, culture, or really anything else really. It's a place that's totally unique in the world. For some reason, too many non-Americans see movies set in NYC and think that all of America is just like this, and it isn't at all.
(Personally, I wish it was more representative of America in terms of walkability, but it just isn't.)
Strange, because most likely the majority of drivers also walk at least a short distance around the same cities they drive into.
In the US in particular, eyballing the number of cars and the number of pedestrians in images of places like New York etc that I've seen, it's very hard to believe that there's a clear line separating all those people walking about from all those people who drive cars, other than the specific time of day they do one or the other.
So you'd think that being careful around pedestrians should come naturally to most drivers, if nothing else because they'd want other drivers to be careful around them as pedestrians also.