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02/15/2016

Crossing the streets - a science

On a cold winter night, in the streets of the small town of Luzern, while the snow gently spreads its flakes, an Indian man and a French girl are walking and conversing cheerfully. Our as much as nature allows: while her teeth are chattering, his jaw seems to be completely clenched by the cold... 

Suddenly the man interrupts the conversation: “So, are we gonna play it Indian style or Swiss style?” The time the message reaches his colleague’s brain, and she wonders what the heck he is talking about, she realizes that he is no longer by her side. So she turns to see where he might be and... he is by the signal, pressing the button for the red light to come. She then looks around her and realizes that she is... in the middle of the crosswalk! And the signal? But what signal? In these empty streets it didn’t even cross her mind to look for a signal! 

india,jaywalking,france,switzerland,crosswalk,signalIt’s the world upside down, almost! The Indian one crossing wisely like a (German) Swiss and the French one wildly like an Indian. Well, ‘almost’ because one needs to know that Parisians actually do not care much about signals nor crosswalks – and all that would actually be the drivers’ fault!* 

Thus the Parisian is better prepared to India than the Luzerner or the Hamburger (or any German). This being said, nothing really prepares a non-Indian to street-crossing in the chaos of Indian traffic where pedestrians have to compete with animals, cars travelling in the wrong direction, buses that never stop. The best (safest) way to cross is to stick to an Indian (and in a way that he would get hit first)... (sticking to a cow also works but it can take a long time because they often decide that the middle of the street is in fact ‘the place to be’...). 

* “When it comes to cars and pedestrians, all Parisians know that a car won’t stop for a pedestrian. Especially at a pedestrian crossing. A car which actually stops at a pedestrian crossing shall be honked at and its driver immediately suspected of homosexuality. Knowing that they don’t belong at pedestrian crossings, Parisians cross the street mostly randomly. So it’s only logically that Parisians cross the street whenever they feel like it or whenever there is a break in traffic.” Source: http://www.o-chateau.com/stuff-parisians-like/crossing-the-street-in-paris.html