There is no pedestrian crossing in NYC that is not either signed or signalled, so there is zero ambiguity about when you are supposed to stop. I'm guessing you are leaving out part of the story and very curious what the actual citation was. Regardless, your first sentence is blatant misinformation, please be careful about how you phrase things.

In Illinois pedestrians ALWAYS have the right of way. So not stopping for a crosswalk is a good way to see if there's a cop lurking nearby.

Which law does that break?

Man I remember when they used to take away peoples licenses in the USA. Good times. It’s like the only way you can get people to recognize that it’s a privilege and not a divine right is by taking it away.

My answer to this question is generally "Cement, the more the better."

The pedestrians also walk across the actual crosswalk area, over the mechanism, showing no concern that those magic stripes could come back down and smush them at any moment. There are a handful of things that take this out of the realm of realism but for me it was mainly that—especially the lady carrying her baby under them

Yeah obviously this is a film set. That's what PSAs are, little government adverts. They didn't deploy this on the street and they're not suggesting this as a solution to a problem. It's a fun little sort of advertisement that has been created to try and make a point.

It's like the Swedish advert from the other day.

It’s a controlled film set…Every single face you see is a unionized actor, any “candid” feelings are purely manufactured for effect.

in Turkey, we pedestrians always yield to cars.

Ah, the Kash Patel look...

That's a very outdated view of traffic engineering and psychology. People (and animals in general) don't stop doing things in response to punishment unless they have a very high chance of expected punishment, way higher that any society could afford in case of traffic control.

If you want people to stop, you've got to build the infrastructure in a way that makes it psychologically natural to stop. Some paint on an otherwise Amercan road won't do shit. You've got to visually and physically narrow the space for drivers to make it uncomfortable or even damaging for them to pass through at unsafe speed.

That low speed is also slow enough that drivers don't feel like they're losing as much by stopping, making them feel like stopping for pedestrians is a lot more fair.

Look at Dutch traffic engineering standards for pedestrian crossings. They're a car-centric country that puts a lot of effort into getting cars everywhere in a relatively safe way.

If your traffic infrastructure requires a cop to stand there for it to work, it's shit infrastructure that's designed to fail.

I'm not convinced it's all about enforcement. In Portland, Oregon, there's not much threat of enforcement but cars stop at the slightest hint of a pedestrian crossing anywhere. Not sure how they pulled it off but there it's a culture thing, not enforcement.

You can do the same thing without cops more cheaply in the long run. Just raising the crosswalks to sidewalk height completely changes driver behavior, as it's both a speed bump, and it's clearly communicated that the crosswalk is the pedestrians' territory that the driver is crossing through.

We can deal with most of these issue through design rather than a threat of fines.

These are just for the ad. They don’t exist in the wild.

Québec is very Nice to live in. We expect immigrants to learn french, and keep religions to themselves. All religions. Catholics have it easier because of our history, but still priests dont go proletyzing un school anymore. Se are largely socialist democrats. Way left of wathever is left un thé usa. The indépendant mouvement is currently gaining ground but i dont expect it to win indépendance while Trump ils un power.

I'm Finnish and I lived in Montréal for a short while, absolutely loved it. Didn't speak any French when I moved there, but I took a language course meant for immigrants (I think it was the municipality that offered those courses? Didn't cost anything as far as I can remember, but it's been a while) and it didn't take me all that long until I could get by with just French in most "simple" situations like stores, restaurants, what have you.

Like others have been saying Montréal is pretty much bilingual so it's easy to get by even if you don't speak French, but I'd definitely recommend studying French

Quebec is notoriously difficult for immigrants to Canada. Highly recommend heading toward Toronto or Ottawa instead

Depends where. Most places around Montreal and Laval are pretty bilingual. The further you get away and eastward (3 rivières, Quebec City, etc. ) the more French it gets, even as close as 30 minutes out you might find there’s no English speaking folks at all, you will still be alright at most tourist destinations though. Not sure how it gets more westward towards Ontario.