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> a Belgian friend of mine often crossed the streets of Brussels without stopping to look at the traffic, with blind faith they would just stop -- and they did.

In some cities/countries, there's also the fine art of looking without looking like you're looking — some drivers will yeild to you when you have the right of way and they aren't sure you've seen them, but will cut you off if they can tell that you know that they're there.

The traffic thing is night and day different from india. Go look up youtube videos of crazy india car traffic. It seems like nobody follows any rules of traffic there - if there's room to fit their car they just go.

The rudest american driver is friendly and accommodating by comparison.

And yet there are a shit ton of unwritten rules that help us indians navigate our crazy traffic with very few accidents ;-)

...india has traffic collisions at ~9x the rate (based on rate per 100k vehicles) as the USA. If the USA had as 'very few accidents' as india there would be a major crisis and its just business as usual in india.

If you compare the way traffic behaves in India vs the US, you would agree that if you tried to drive like in the us you would end up with way more accidents than the ~9x figure would suggest.

Please enlighten us as to what some of these rules are. As an outsider it just looks like chaos but you can tell there's some kind of code.

Frankly, these are not easy to specify rules. Now if you were on the passenger seat when i was driving and kept on asking questions, then maybe we could unearth a bunch of these rules.

Things like you know when another car will not cut across, or when another car is going to hit the brakes or cut across are more a function of understanding how the traffic behaves and this is what helps a majority of us indians avoid accidents.

Generally, in rural US the pace is very slow and most everybody on the road is not in a hurry.

People will gladly wait a long time, I've even seen a case where someone jumps out of a car and diverted traffic until a turtle crossed the road.

Speed is otherwise very fast - be seen!

I guess it's relative. When I was in San Diego and LA it was terrible. Among other things, drivers are the leading killers of children and young adults in the US, and they disproportionately kill people walking and cycling.

You look up the street because the Driver might be distracted, not because you think he might do something malicious.

99.99999% of the time the car will respect pedestrians (assuming of course the road is marked properly. If not, maybe say a prayer)

Yes, of course. Same in Argentina. The thing is, here the driver will be distracted with 90% probability or will simply think he/she has priority. It's a cultural thing. Of course they are not trying to actively drive over you... mostly.

Living in SF, I’m always impressed that people stop so quickly to let you pass. Doesn’t happen that much in France. But also: streets in France are much narrower so it’s easier to just jay walk.

In France half of the time people don't even stop when they're supposed to (zebra walk without signals).

In cities, it's hit or miss. Outside of that drivers tend to be pretty gracious.

> If there's no semaphore, good luck crossing

Do they actually call traffic lights "semaphores" over there?

Yes. We speak Spanish and we call them "semáforos"; my translation to English just wasn't very good :)

TMK, (fineable) jaywalking generally isn't a thing in Europe, only in USA (due to car manufacturing industry's meddling and lobbying, of course, making the cars first class citizens). One EU country's example: it's perfectly legal to cross any street/road if there is no marked pedestrian crossing within circa 50 meters, with usual common sense requirement of demonstrating one's intention of doing so to the oncoming traffic. Drivers are obligated by law to stop/slow down, and let them pass.

This varies tremendously by city/county within Europe. For example, there are some German cities where crossing a road anywhere other than at a marked crossing not only risks a fine but also will earn disapproving looks from other pedestrians (something I haven't encountered in the states, though I'm not ruling out the possibility that it could occur somewhere).

It varies quite a bit in the U.S. too. I live near Dallas. In Dallas (pop 1.4 million) jaywalking will absolutely result in a very expensive citation. In Fort Worth, 30 miles away (population 800,000) it is of course equally illegal but you can do it with near impunity in front of a police officer. Depends on how relaxed the local culture is and to some extent how dangerous the roads are.