As an anecdote, there's a road that ends in an entrance/exit to a freeway that I use pretty frequently when driving from my home to Beirut. Two years ago, because the fact that the road was a 2-way road(people could use it to leave the freeway as well as enter it) was causing a lot of traffic they changed it into a 1-way road you could only use to enter the freeway, you had to leave from an exit further down the line. This reduced traffic jams immensely. However, before that could happen they had to go through several iterations on how to enforce this. First, a simple traffic sign was tried, this was largely ignored. Then they placed plastic barriers(those triangular things that can be filled with sand or water). Every night somebody would stop, get out of their car and move them to pass and things went back to how they were before the next day. Now they've closed it off with concrete barriers. It's working, but occasionally, especially at night, somebody will stop after the entrance, then back up into it and then use it as an exit. I once almost rear-ended someone doing that while I was going onto the freeway.
We have bad drivers here but I am willing to bet we exported the behaviour to Lebanon not the other way around.
I've seen people burn red lights right in front of police officers and get no reaction. Heck, I've seen police cars burn red lights(for no reason, sirens weren't on, they were driving pretty slow, they just felt like it). I have a friend who got rear-ended by a police car and then verbally abused for being an idiot by stopping at a red light at night.
We didn't use to have speeding tickets a couple of year back. Then they started enforcing speed limits. Lo-and-behold people started paying attention and generally trying not to speed. But going the wrong way(even on a highway, I was once almost killed by a guy doing that because there was a traffic jam at the only exit and he didn't feel like waiting so he just U-turned and went the other way, but that's another story) will not get you fined.
I'm pretty sure that if traffic rules were enforced properly then people wouldn't so easily ignore them. But we don't have the necessary amount of police to even do a significant fraction of what's needed.
A lot of ex-hockey goons are police, three cars go through the red light, people don't signal turns not even police, lines on the road are ignored, people park anywhere, tailgaters everywhere, cars without license plates, road crews make the roads stupid because they can't drive so how would they know a road is wrong and on and on.
I feel your pain.
As another commenter says, I've seen both of these things happen in New York City (especially the second).
Traffic rules create a useful abstraction but, if you want to be safe, the only non-leaky abstraction is seeing traffic as a collection of objects moving at various speeds which can optionally change acceleration or direction based on things like traffic lights / your presence / cats running across the road after the required reaction time has elapsed.
It's a bit less relaxing of a way to travel, but it sure as hell beats waking up in the hospital with brain damage, a leg whose foot no longer points in the direction it should and an arm that's no longer moving or ... not waking up at all.
The rules are: you imagine that you are literally invisible and find a way to cross the road that doesn't rely on the drivers' cooperation with you or the law. The drivers don't know you exist, because you are invisible.
Playing that game allowed me, for example, to jump onto the hood of a car that stopped at a red light briefly then hit the gas just as I walked in front of it. I was playing invisible man, as always, and had imagined what I would do if that guy, who was stopping, decided to take off again just as I got in front of his car. I imagined jumping onto his hood, which I did so quickly when he hit the gas that I landed on his windshield staring in at him with a grin on my face (instead of ending up under his tires.)
You can't protect yourself from everything, but playing the invisible man game each time you cross a street with traffic is a good strategy. I should add that I can't really play it if I'm on the phone, so I pause my call ("oh, um, hold on a second, I'll be right back"), play the game, and resume the call on the other side.
So, when in developing countries, I prefer to cross the street in the middle of a block (with no alleys in sight). This way there are only two directions I need to be wary about.
Now, that I've taken up road cycling, I'm at the mercy of other drivers and I'm afraid there are no hacks I could use (except of being extra careful at intersections).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_car-free_places
Wish there were more.
So you get a disproportionate amount of car use by rich/influential people (including many politicians), and they have far more effect on public policy than the average person. Even if the right thing overall is to restrict automobile usage, any politician has to be very careful how he introduces such policies lest he quickly feel the wrath of the well-connected...
If he were richer and more influential, he wouldn't be in Leader Heights, he'd be in Baltimore or Philadelphia.
I've used public transit almost my whole life, but recently I'm becoming seduced by those evil cars. If I take the subway during rush hour, I can barely get enough space to read an iPad. If I don't travel during rush hour, I don't have dinner with my family.
However, I will note: even if you follow this rule, be prepared to jump out of the way. I have to, and often. I walk 4 miles/day in city streets. The number of times I've had to jump out of the way when I had the right of way... ridiculous. Defensive walking or you won't be walking for long.
I used to drive through the intersection Andrew Scott Reisse was hit almost every day (until major road construction re-routed me). It's part of what strikes me as so random about this event. Unless he lived in one of the homes in that area, it puzzles me why he was walking through that intersection at that particular time of day. Unless, that is, he just really liked to walk and covered a lot of ground. In which case, this reminder is especially poignant.
My partner and I have a short commute so whenever we're crossing a street (often its one of the same cross-streets Andrew was hit in), I remind her: crossing this street is probably the most dangerous thing you're going to do this week. Put away the smart phone and pay attention like your life depends on it.
Can we please stop blaming the victims?
The main way to stop the carnage is to change our infrastructure. It's a political issue.
That said, regardless of the assignment of culpability and wrongdoing I think it is fundamentally important for pedestrians (namely: all people) to understand that it is with in their power to dramatically reduce their risk of injury by developing defensive habits. At the end of the day it doesn't matter if you died noble and innocent, dead is dead.
By the same token, it's not ok to blame children for sexual abuse, but it is smart to educate them about the dangers and to empower them with the skills to be able to avoid it.