> Boston ... do not acknowledge the existence of motor vehicles
I presume you haven't spent much time in Boston? There's a constant dialog that goes on between pedestrians, cars, bikes, etc where for any situation everybody judges each others' velocity, figures out the obvious ordering, and then executes on that plan. When there's a conflict, the party that's already behind generally delays themselves slightly and that's that. It's the people that don't understand this give-and-take that tend to cause problems.
To me, that seems a lot more reasonable that eg SoCal where if I'm planning on walking behind a car in a neighborhood or parking lot, most of the time they'll slam on their brakes and wave me on as if they're doing me a favor by getting in my way.
I presume you haven't spent much time in Boston? There's a constant dialog that goes on between pedestrians, cars, bikes, etc where for any situation everybody judges each others' velocity, figures out the obvious ordering, and then executes on that plan. When there's a conflict, the party that's already behind generally delays themselves slightly and that's that. It's the people that don't understand this give-and-take that tend to cause problems.
To me, that seems a lot more reasonable that eg SoCal where if I'm planning on walking behind a car in a neighborhood or parking lot, most of the time they'll slam on their brakes and wave me on as if they're doing me a favor by getting in my way.