anonyme
I don’t think you can know what either participant was thinking, but if the driver actually “thought” that the runner would pause that suggests two things. First, the driver expected that the runner would wait for him to turn; second, the driver saw the runner headed toward the crosswalk and therefore had no excuse not to yield. The other impossibility is that the runner would have been able to psychically intuit the intentions of all the drivers behind him and adjusted his gait to allow them right of way. It’s common sense that the runner should have looked over his shoulder before entering the street to make sure he’d been seen. But given the fact that eye contact is a myth, and that many, many drivers do not obey the law, this doesn’t guarantee safety for anyone. The driver would be wrong in any of these scenarios. Nor are there laws governing the speed at which a pedestrian can/must traverse a crosswalk.