We do that in Canada too. A friend and I were walking along the deserted downtown core of Vancouver late at night after a movie once, chatting as we went, and stopped and waited for the crosswalk signal without cluing in that there was absolutely no traffic to be seen in any direction until someone else came up behind us and crossed the street without breaking stride, ha ha.
Meanwhile, during the day there, people pretty much play 'tag' with the cars and cross anywhere they damned well feel like it, which is taking your life in your hands.
In Halifax on the East Coast, though, a lot of pedestrians get hit (and often killed) because everyone in Nova Scotia drives *very* nicely and will stop and *wait* for you to get to the crosswalk if it looks like you're headed that way. Except in Halifax, there's so much extra stuff on the sidewalks and cars parked on the side of the road and stuff that one can't see the pedestrians very well until they're in the street, and the non-Haligonians have been trained to expect traffic to automatically stop for them and too often step out into it without looking first.
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We do that in Canada too. A friend and I were walking along the deserted downtown core of Vancouver late at night after a movie once, chatting as we went, and stopped and waited for the crosswalk signal without cluing in that there was absolutely no traffic to be seen in any direction until someone else came up behind us and crossed the street without breaking stride, ha ha.
Meanwhile, during the day there, people pretty much play 'tag' with the cars and cross anywhere they damned well feel like it, which is taking your life in your hands.
In Halifax on the East Coast, though, a lot of pedestrians get hit (and often killed) because everyone in Nova Scotia drives *very* nicely and will stop and *wait* for you to get to the crosswalk if it looks like you're headed that way. Except in Halifax, there's so much extra stuff on the sidewalks and cars parked on the side of the road and stuff that one can't see the pedestrians very well until they're in the street, and the non-Haligonians have been trained to expect traffic to automatically stop for them and too often step out into it without looking first.