> ... shall exercise all due care and shall reduce the speed of the vehicle or take any other action relating to the operation of the vehicle as necessary to safeguard the safety of the pedestrian.
In addition, all of the rules for pedestrians (no jaywalking, don't dash off the curb in front of a car, even in a crosswalk) include a provision that state they do not "relieve a driver of a vehicle from the duty of exercising due care for the safety of any pedestrian within the [roadway or crosswalk]"
This is great in principle but in practice cars will just drive straight at you even when you are crossing on a walk signal.
Coming from a country where the walk signal means only pedestrians can be in the crosswalk this almost got me killed the other night.
I was hoping self driving cars would help things but it seems they drive straight for you too.
No, but in the case of pedestrians crossing the street it may be reasonable to expect a driverless car to avoid getting into a situation where that can happen. This will depend on details of traffic laws where it is operating.
What are the clearance rules in California for staying clear of pedestrians crossing the street?
Here in Washington it is that if they are in your half of the street or within one lane of your half you have to wait. For purposes of this rule your half of the street is all lanes moving in your direction.
No Washington driver should be going until either the pedestrian finishes crossing or there is at least one lane between the lanes in the car's direction and the lane the pedestrian is in.
If a human driver here goes early and hits the pedestrian and the pedestrian ends up in an adjacent lane they should still be safe from other cars that did not go early.