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> do pedestrians [...] really make "eye contact" with drivers to gauge their intention? Yes. Consciously, at every vehicle at an intersection, to make sure the

• shangxiao 9y ago
  When driving, if another driving appears to be doing something unusual I try to make eye contact to see what they're doing and try to determine their intentions.
• MrMember 9y ago
  I do it all the time whether I'm walking, in a car, or on my motorcycle. If I look at them and see them looking at me it raises my confidence that they see me.
  • kpil 9y ago
    I've been given a ride in the passenger seat of a RHD car in a RHT country, ie the steering wheel is on the "wrong" side. It's actually quite stressful before the driver (hopefully) stops at a zebra crossing after you accidentally caught eye contact with a waiting pedestrian staring at you. The best strategy is to just look down, but that feels a bit stupid too when the pedestrians are clearly looking at you.
• saalweachter 9y ago
  An electric car with an empty driver seat sitting at an intersection would be especially bad; when cross the street I would interpret that as a parked car, especially if it was by the curb (for either left or a right on a one-way street). Hopefully the car would be smart enough not to hit me but I don't want to have to start staring deeply at every parked car, trying to intuit if it is a robot about to pull away.
  • mgbmtl 9y ago
    Do like in Canada: all cars must have their headlights on when driving (the lights automatically turn on). edit: also, I feel like if we add new light signals for acceleration, for example, it would be nice to add that to all cars.
    • 5ilv3r 9y ago
      16 year olds would wire them to be on all the time.
    • vanjoe 9y ago
      Those are daytime running lights. I wish headlights were mandatory, that would eliminate people driving in rainy twilight without lights on.
      • dsfyu404ed 9y ago
        It does the opposite. An always lit in vehicle display and DRLs that are just always on headlights makes people forget to turn their lights on when it's dark. This isn't a problem for them since they have their headlights on but drivers behind them don't see them from a distance at night because their tail lights are not lit up. This is particularly dangerous in traffic where everyone else has their lights on. Making DRLs mandatory is tripping over a quarter to pick up a penny because it enables this behavior.
        • xyzzy_plugh 9y ago
          I just always turn my headlights on when I start my car. It doesn't matter if it's day or night, or it'll get dark while I'm driving, or if it starts raining or I go through a tunnel. The lights are just always on. If everyone's car just did this automatically, the world would be a safer place. Why would you ever want the lights off?
          • gambiting 9y ago
            Well, ask in countries which actually have that as law - Poland introduced it few years ago and the jury is still out on whether it made roads safer or not. I'd argue it didn't - mostly because as a driver your brain starts to associate lights = moving car. Which means that you start to ignore everything that doesn't have lights - bicycles, cars where someone forgot to turn the lights on. There were studies done on this and it's very inconclusive that it improves safety at all.
• hansjorg 9y ago
  I wonder if it's also beneficial to make eye contact since you have to turn your face towards the driver. Our brains are pretty good at picking out faces from a sea of visual information.