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Comment by coldpie | Hacker News Reader

Yeah. Never wave pedestrians through. It's faster for everyone for you to zip through than for me to wait for you to slow to a complete stop (like hell I'm walking in front of a moving car). I've had people stop at a green light(!) while I'm waiting on the side of the two-lane road for the crosswalk signal to change. I just stood there and stared until the light changed and they missed their green. I'm not going to cross into traffic because you don't respect the rules.

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The exception being a situation where there's not going to be a space behind you. If they're going to be waiting for someone to stop, and it looks like they've been there a while, waving them through can be reasonable.

Always be mindful of the people you're going to be making wait, though.

In a lot of countries and at least in California, according to the DMV handbook, pedestrians have the right of way, whether in marked or unmarked crosswalks. Cars are required to let them pass first, who arrived first is irrelevant there. Waving at them is only a polite redundant sign.

Pedestrians have the right of way in crosswalks UNLESS there is a signal; if there is a signal, the pedestrian only has right of way when the signal allows them to cross.

In WA where I am, and I believe in CA, standing on the curb facing the crosswalk != using a crosswalk. Standing around looking like you might use the crosswalk someday doesn't mean anything; using the crosswalk (and having right of way) starts only from the moment they step off the sidewalk. The WA code makes this pretty clear; CA uses the specific phrase "withinin a crosswalk" which makes me believe the interpretation is the same there.

So waving through someone who's not actively crossing is not correctly yielding the right of way. OTOH, drivers should bloody well expect pedestrians to start crossing in front of them when you haven't stopped yet (both states say that a pedestrian may not step out if there is inadequate room for the car to react and stop; by the contrapositive a pedestrian may step out in front of a car if there is adequate distance.)

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