In Germany pedestrians also always have priority over turning cars when crossing at an intersection, no matter if there is a pedestrian crossing or not.
I was interpreting GP as talking about "who is supposed to go first" not "Can I run them over intentionally."
The latter is not allowed anywhere in the US. However, I have seen cops giving a pedestrian a ticket for crossing right next to a giant "No Crossing" sign as they were being loaded into an ambulance. At that particular section of the street the assumption was that the driver did not intentionally hit the pedestrian as there was a blind corner.
Also, I don't know if you saw the footage from a few years back of the self-driving-car hitting the pedestrian in Arizona while the safety driver was on their phone? Without the dash-cam, the driver likely would not have been found at fault, as the cops are likely to believe a driver that says they didn't see a pedestrian crossing in the dark at night until too late.
I really wanted to test this idea last weekend at a crowded festival in a town center. I had been waiting for a spot since parking was basically impossible to find. As I was halfway into the spot, a woman ran up and placed herself an inch from my front bumper while calling her friend four blocks away to tell them she had a spot. I was still blocking the travel lane partially and she refused to move even when I closed that inch down to mere millimeters. I may have even tapped her slightly.
If I hadn't been 1500 miles from home I would have gladly continued moving forward at idle speed or just left my car where it was and gone on my way but any legal hassles would have been extra painful having to travel back and fight it. As it was after about 5 minutes of this, a spot opened up two spaces over and I was able to slide over and grab it.
Crosswalks near High Schools tend to be rather bad as well; the other day I saw a teenager start crossing (walking, not running) when there were 3 seconds left on the countdown. Then one of her friends called out to her from behind while she was in the middle of a travel lane that, by this point, has a green light. She stops, turns, and has a good 15s of back-and-forth conversation before completing walking across the street.
