They might get a few scratches from those flimsy flexible plastics but it's not dangerous.

They'll definitely compassion about the possibility for scratches screaming, "that could damage my property!" though.

I'd be more worried about them coming back down on pedestrians.

These are just for the ad. They don’t exist in the wild.

You can do the same thing without cops more cheaply in the long run. Just raising the crosswalks to sidewalk height completely changes driver behavior, as it's both a speed bump, and it's clearly communicated that the crosswalk is the pedestrians' territory that the driver is crossing through.

We can deal with most of these issue through design rather than a threat of fines.

Cyclists have a name for that and I think it's something like "the life saving look". Usually used when changing lanes or at an intersection.

That's a very outdated view of traffic engineering and psychology. People (and animals in general) don't stop doing things in response to punishment unless they have a very high chance of expected punishment, way higher that any society could afford in case of traffic control.

If you want people to stop, you've got to build the infrastructure in a way that makes it psychologically natural to stop. Some paint on an otherwise Amercan road won't do shit. You've got to visually and physically narrow the space for drivers to make it uncomfortable or even damaging for them to pass through at unsafe speed.

That low speed is also slow enough that drivers don't feel like they're losing as much by stopping, making them feel like stopping for pedestrians is a lot more fair.

Look at Dutch traffic engineering standards for pedestrian crossings. They're a car-centric country that puts a lot of effort into getting cars everywhere in a relatively safe way.

I'm not convinced it's all about enforcement. In Portland, Oregon, there's not much threat of enforcement but cars stop at the slightest hint of a pedestrian crossing anywhere. Not sure how they pulled it off but there it's a culture thing, not enforcement.

Ah, the Kash Patel look...

If your traffic infrastructure requires a cop to stand there for it to work, it's shit infrastructure that's designed to fail.

I remember a driver on Reddit losing their shit about bus-lane modal filters - the kind that will wreck the underside of your car if you ignore all the signs and drive over them anyway. They could not imagine the cruelty.

Those plastic things are just for show, as part of the campaign, which is why the drivers seem surprised that they're there. They're not actually installed on any roads. But having them pop up as the car approaches if there's a pedestrian on the corner makes it obvious that the car needs to stop.

As a headsup, pedestrian deaths at crossings is consistently higher in places where right on red is legal. It's not bad drivers, it's a bad law enabling bad driving.

Montréal never banned right on red.

No right on red was the default, then most of Canada enabled right on red in the 1970, but Québec did not. Québec later enabled right on red by default in 2003, but Montréal (island) retained no right on red.

And RToR is bad everywhere. We'veknow it for a long time, but have jsut collectivelydecoded the cost was worth it. Here's an article from Victoira in 1981 talking about it https://www.newspapers.com/clip/107821508/times-colonist-victoria-may-5-1981/

Turning on right policy was never enabled in Montreal. And wtf you going on about blaming immigrant drivers? Source please, because this sounds like some divisive bullshit from the ROC.

Oh look. A canadian pissing on Québec just because. I've never heard a single person mention anything about immigrant driver.

In Germany I'd say in nearly all occasions cars would stop if I actively walk towards the crosswalk. If I just stand on the side and look and wait its not that uncommon that cars still don't yield even if they should

The French will try to run you over, and the Italians actively speed up when they see a pedestrian.

In the UK you actually do have to stop and people do even Audi drivers stop sometimes.

In the US, you can only get them to stop if you get hit. And that's only a maybe.

Pedestrians and bicycles aren't even second class citizens in the states.

In SEA, the vehicles don't stop, but they will try to go around you. So the key is to walk at a constant pace.

The graveyard is filled with people who had the right of way.

It's the same where I live, and yet i have been almost run over twice in the last two weeks alone

I kind want to see what that does to a car that doesn't stop. Probably rips their front wheels off

Holy shit how many idiots had to turn themselves into pancakes for this level of barriers to be justified? Insanity.

There shouldn't be any barriers at railway crossings. Let natural selection win. Do we really want a future full of people who don't have the brains to give way to a train?

Just For Laughs gags meets traffic engineering.

Raised crosswalks weren't too common in most burroughs of Montréal when I left, but alternative road surfaces for slower zones we're gaining popularity.

Carry a disability stick with a hard metal ball on the front. Hold it out in front of you and if they buzz you, their head lights get broken

My answer to this question is generally "Cement, the more the better."

Carry a closed umbrella and hold it out in front of you as you approach the crossing.
This triggers the car brain's panic button, since it would scratch their paint if they hit it, which is much, much worse than endangering a human.

We have those where I live. Crosswalk compliance is decent here, but these don't get anyone to stop who wasn't going to stop anyway, and they get stolen all the time.

Man I remember when they used to take away peoples licenses in the USA. Good times. It’s like the only way you can get people to recognize that it’s a privilege and not a divine right is by taking it away.

There are plenty of structural changes that can help.
Raised crosswalks are a major one.

Which law does that break?

In Illinois pedestrians ALWAYS have the right of way. So not stopping for a crosswalk is a good way to see if there's a cop lurking nearby.

There is no pedestrian crossing in NYC that is not either signed or signalled, so there is zero ambiguity about when you are supposed to stop. I'm guessing you are leaving out part of the story and very curious what the actual citation was. Regardless, your first sentence is blatant misinformation, please be careful about how you phrase things.

The taxi drivers are dicks, they lay on the horn the second the light turns green, good luck driving a stick in that hellscape.

Québec is very Nice to live in. We expect immigrants to learn french, and keep religions to themselves. All religions. Catholics have it easier because of our history, but still priests dont go proletyzing un school anymore. Se are largely socialist democrats. Way left of wathever is left un thé usa. The indépendant mouvement is currently gaining ground but i dont expect it to win indépendance while Trump ils un power.

Quebec is notoriously difficult for immigrants to Canada. Highly recommend heading toward Toronto or Ottawa instead

Depends where. Most places around Montreal and Laval are pretty bilingual. The further you get away and eastward (3 rivières, Quebec City, etc. ) the more French it gets, even as close as 30 minutes out you might find there’s no English speaking folks at all, you will still be alright at most tourist destinations though. Not sure how it gets more westward towards Ontario.

I'm Finnish and I lived in Montréal for a short while, absolutely loved it. Didn't speak any French when I moved there, but I took a language course meant for immigrants (I think it was the municipality that offered those courses? Didn't cost anything as far as I can remember, but it's been a while) and it didn't take me all that long until I could get by with just French in most "simple" situations like stores, restaurants, what have you.

Like others have been saying Montréal is pretty much bilingual so it's easy to get by even if you don't speak French, but I'd definitely recommend studying French

Yeah obviously this is a film set. That's what PSAs are, little government adverts. They didn't deploy this on the street and they're not suggesting this as a solution to a problem. It's a fun little sort of advertisement that has been created to try and make a point.

It's like the Swedish advert from the other day.

It’s a controlled film set…Every single face you see is a unionized actor, any “candid” feelings are purely manufactured for effect.

in Turkey, we pedestrians always yield to cars.

The pedestrians also walk across the actual crosswalk area, over the mechanism, showing no concern that those magic stripes could come back down and smush them at any moment. There are a handful of things that take this out of the realm of realism but for me it was mainly that—especially the lady carrying her baby under them

It's a brilliant campaign because of lack of enforcement and entitled drivers that treat traffic laws as suggestions.

Not so brilliant for the people killed before the culture shifts, if it does at all.

LMAO works flawlessly in other countries is a hilarious way to say that people still get hit by cars and are injured, or worse, in crosswalks where countries do have hefty fines for not stopping for pedestrians. Also someone would have to actually enforce that.

As a, quite sad, example - a child was killed at a crossing near a school near me when a person who wasn't paying attention ran them over in the crosswalk. Guess what, here in America where I live there is a fine and it's even more if you're in a school zone. Did not flawlessly stop that kid from dying.

It's only there to produce the video.
Everyone shown here, including the drivers, are acting.
No one suggests implementing this for real.

They won't last long enough to be damaged by ice before someone drives into them.

lol if you smash somebody's window with a hammer in America you will get shot

Québec is awesome and I'm glad the québécois stuck up for their culture so hardcore otherwise the English would have turned it into Canada's Louisiana, a pale shadow of the French culture that once was

Because no one ever ignores stop signs, especially when they think they're useless

If they can ignore the crosswalk, they can ignore stop sign. Raised crosswalk is significantly better, it both work as a crosswalk and a road bump, which people will have to slow down to prevent damage to their vehicles. Also this is ad campaign if you haven't notice, it isn't real.

If there's a stop sign you'd need to come to a stop even if there's no pedestrians at the cross walk. If cars would stop when there's a pedestrian then they only need to stop when there's a pedestrian.

As someone who seldom drives, sure put up a stop sign. But it would be better for drivers if it didn't have to come to that.

But the crosswalk is a stop sign if a pedestrian is using it in most modern traffic codes, and even if you are only about to use it (visible intent to cross), 80 countries agree that is enough to give you right of way on a crosswalk. Visually a crosswalk is just completely unmistakable, so what would adding another stop sign do?

If those rules are unclear, maybe trafic education is lacking? Or maybe repercussions are not enough, maybe increase the fines or chance to get fined?

Interestingly Qatar, Macao and Singapore place the burden of safety on the pedestrians while crossing a crosswalk(very cool for pedestrians, famously lacking about 1 to 2 tons of steel cage to protect them during a collision with a car).