And in India, they are commonly refereed to as "Zebra Crossing". No one refers to them as cross-walks and most have no idea about that term.
I failed a few recaptchas like that too, tho not due to language barrier, but because I didn't pick some things that didn't look like crossings at all. I am convinced that some of those supposed markings were not crossings at all but things that somehow got into google's labeling db as outright false positives.
I find recaptchas downright humiliating. I think twice before completing one — is whatever it grants access to worth it?
Imagine if, every time you went to the supermarket or the library, there was some goon on the door who wouldn't let you in unless you could do ten press-ups and answer half a dozen general knowledge questions. They'd soon go out of business --as all websites which treat their visitors with such contempt deserve to do.
Check if you are logged into google. (pretty much unavoidable in chrome). If you have a google account then they know your phone number is verified and getting a phone number usually requires government mandated identification.
Otherwise they use fingerprinting to identify you and correlate it with activity on google, youtube, google ads, etc.
If those two things fail then Google will give you an endless stream of captchas even if you answer all of them correctly. I often had to complete 20 captchas only for it to tell me "sorry". There was maybe a 1/3 chance that completing all 20 captchas let me through.
Meanwhile on a different browser where I'm logged into google I get through on first attempt. Google captchas are just a data mining operation. They have nothing to do with proving whether you are human. After all, if they have enough data about you they often give you the option to skip the captcha altogether. The captcha is a psychological attack on you to convince you to give Google more data.
I think it's time for a vast menagerie of crossings.
1) The AARdvark crossing. When you hit the button it sings the aardvark song. Also useful on talk like a pirate day.
2) The Abalone crossing. It's under the water and quite endangered.
...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belisha_beacon
Pelican crossings have the button you must press to cross.
Zebra has striped road markings, with flashing yellow marker lights so that vehicle users have plenty of advance warning of the crossing. Pedestrians have right of way on these crossings at all times, other road users should slow until they can discern whether any pedestrians are trying to cross and if necessary stop.
Pelican is an older design, though still used in new crossings in London and some other places. The pedestrians controls are in a box at hand height but the signals are on the far side of the crossing. These trigger road signals in a pattern with an extra flashing amber phase meaning "road vehicles may cross only if there are no pedestrians using the crossing".
Puffin is a replacement for Pelican with two innovations. Firstly the pedestrian signals are with your controls on your side of the road and they're placed so that to face towards them you're also facing oncoming traffic (this will most often be the right side of the crossing since the British drive on the left, but not in every situation). Secondly there is no flashing amber phase, the Puffin has infrared detectors so it can discern whether pedestrians are still on the crossing and extend the red phase slightly if they are.
The Toucan and Pegasus mentioned elsewhere are variants of Puffin rather than Pelican.
on edit: changed here to hear.
We have pedestrian crossings, not cross walks.
Fire hydrants around here are inside the ground, or in a riser if inside a building.
Can any US people clarify?
But I'm basically only familiar with them from bloody reCaptchas, so I don't know!
For crosswalks not at an intersection (typically when there is several hundred feet of road without an intersection for crosswalks), I believe pedestrians always have the right of way. Sometimes they have a button you can push that will activate yellow lights overhead so drivers know that you're crossing (primarily useful at night). I think you have the right of way regardless, but given how little attention many people pay, I tend to treat them like I'm jaywalking anyways.
Traffic laws can vary by state, but in general pedestrians always have the right-of-way on a crosswalk (except when there's a traffic light).
Whether or not cars will actually stop for you is a different story.
It's a bit like that idiotic back to front MM-DD-YYYY date format that no-one else uses outside America, but even non-US gadget manufacturers insist on making the default. I nearly sent my Xiaomi MiBand back when I realised it was hard-wired to display the date back to front. Luckily, with my middle-aged eyesight and the minuscule 3pt text it uses to display the date, I can't read the fecker anyway, so the annoyance is slightly diminished.
Cross-Walk(even Pedestrian) is a better term than Zebra-Crossing; for kids though, Zebra helps.
Edit: English were in world over making colonies across Afro-Asian countries.
https://www.thehindu.com/in-school/sh-science/The-zebra-in-o...
Has anyone seen a Zebra cross a zebra-crossing? Only happens in England.
They used zebra crossing (even though there are no Zebras in the UK either, I think), so we used it. Now the new argument is that the cultural imperialism of the US is forcing us to change the term again. Sure, the term "cross-walk" sort of makes more sense than zebra crossing, but not enough that you don't need it defined for you the first time you encounter it. So, it is not such a precise and great term, as you almost say, that one can ignore the cultural imperialism argument.
Both arguments (colonialism and cultural imperialism) are distinct and can be treated separately.
As for cross-walk making more sense; Zebra crossing are so named because of the black and white stripes they comprise of, they require you to have seen one, yes, but, I'd argue that without context "cross-walk" is no more descriptive.
Collectively, we call our crossings (Toucan, Pelican, Zebra, Pegasus), "road crossings". They are so named due to their properties; Toucan because "two (types of user) can" cross there, Pelican (formerly pelicon) because it stands for PEdestrian LIght C[O]Ntrolled crossing), Zebra for its stripes, and Pegasus due to the buttons being accessible at heights suitable for those riding horses.
Pier is a more familiar term to me. I think I've only heard the term boardwalk in relation to some place in New Jersey.