You could easily imagine a world where pedestrians have the right of way on the streets, and cars "request access to the road" in a similar way that pedestrians do. Actually, if this is not easy for you to imagine - it suggests enormous internal bias.
Population density of Manhattan: 78,000 per square mile
(according to wikipedia on both)
The Highway Code was recently updated (a few years ago) to make it more explicit that pedestrians crossing a side road junction should have priority over vehicles trying to turn into the side road. However, that's not necessarily followed by all drivers/cyclists etc.
Basically, drivers/cyclists are expected to make all efforts to avoid a collision and will be considered at fault unless it's a scenario where the pedestrian steps into the road without enough time for the driver/cyclist to react and avoid them.
The City of Westminster has a day-time population of around 1 million people, and its area is around 8 sq miles; (doing casual searching).
Pedestrians are more nimble than cars, so it kind of makes sense that cars have the right of way. As far as I know, large container ships have right of way over small vessels for the same reason.
That sounds lovely. I would live in that city.
Using the right tools at the right place is part of it: cars are useful for some trips, less for others. Trying to solve every transportation problem with a unique solution was IMHO the original sin of this.
> Pedestrians are more nimble
Think kids going to school and elderlies. Having something that work for them requires either putting the burden on cars or removing cars from the picture. One costs a lot more than the other, and in the case you want to keep cars in cities the former is probably more attractive than the latter.
In NYC, the speed limit is 25 miles per hour. What's more, there are plans to reduce that to 20mph in a bunch of places.
Moral: Don't drive in NYC.
Wait, when are you driving faster than that in a city anyway? City roads here are mostly restricted to 30kph; travel times didn't significantly increase when this was imposed a while back.
And yet, I still disagree that pedestrians should be able to just enter the road willy-nilly. Crosswalks are there for safety because it sets the same expectations for everyone using the road, drivers included, thus creating order and flow that is generally reliable.
This is also the same problem I have with cyclists that think they should be allowed to ride against traffic, ignore stop signs, etc. By not moving with the expected flow, they endanger themselves and creat problems. When I am making a right hand turn, for example, and a cyclist has decided to ride against traffic, I am not compelled to look to my right as I am timing my turn because I am not expecting traffic to be there since a right turn has you crossing zero lanes of traffic and merging with on-coning that would be on your left.
I don't really like our car-centric roads in the US at all, but rules are in place for a reason.
Except you may have just passed a cyclist without leaving enough time to turn because you barely registered their presence and are now going to cut them off. Or you stopped at an intersection and they approached on the right because that is where they are supposed to stay by law and you didn't check your blind spot before you started. The first situation can happen with cars where you pass a slow moving car just before an intersection and immediately slow down to turn right, merging back into the lane and cutting off the car. If you have driven any amount of time at all, I am sure you have seen that annoying scenario. The second situation doesn't typically happen with cars because of how right turn lanes are constructed but can (unlawfully) occur when someone (typically a tourist) was in the straight going lane but realized they wanted or needed to turn right.
Dedicated bicycle lanes are meant to make it clear that you are indeed crossing traffic when you turn right because bicycles as slow moving traffic are intended to stay in that area as an exceptional case.
