El Camino always seemed to me like it has an absurdly low speed limit, then a friend reminded me that there are unsignaled pedestrian crosswalks along it in Mountain View. It's true that it feels like it ought to be a 45 road, though.

Here in Britain, it's entirely lawful and very common to cross 40-60MPH roads without signals. Often the roads don't even have a marked crossing, since you can legally cross wherever you want.

It's also not too uncommon to cross a non-motorway 70MPH dual carriageway, when walking outside a city.

I don't know if our roads are safer for pedestrians than the USA. They're considerably safer in total, but it seems difficult to compare the US and UK for pedestrians in particular because of the differing laws and distribution of methods of travel. However, they're probably at least in the same ball park, despite our more laissez faire attitude toward pedestrian-road interaction.

As one example of a crossing which does have warnings:

The A417 between Cirencester and Cheltenham is a dual carriageway that has pedestrian footpaths across it.

Imagine driving at 70mph toward this:

350 yard warning: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.8078399,-2.0618748,3a,75y,...

actual crossing: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.8051623,-2.0595278,3a,75y,...

350 yards at 70 MPH is, I think, 10 seconds.

That's about twice the stopping distance for a wet road so plenty of time to stop except that you can't tell until a lot later that someone might be about to cross because you can't see the pedestrian approach. I come from Swindon and drive that road quite often when I go back to visit family and I have never seen a pedestrian cross it. I certainly wouldn't like to do it except on a bright clear and dry day but I dare say that the locals might have a better idea of the risks.

A lot of drivers in the US are hostile towards anything that's not a vehicle. Heck, they're often hostile towards anything that's not a car or a truck like motorcycles. I see more hate for those riding bicycles but pedestrians get a fair amount too.

I don't know of any on El Camino in Mountain View not at a controlled intersection. There are some on ECR in Sunnyvale (e.g. just W of Halford) and two notorious ones in Santa Clara, though.

Of course, the County wants to reserve a lane for bus use only now...

It is a stupid road. Built for speed, legistlated for slow. The road should be modified to make traffic calmer.

With three lanes in each direction, there should be plenty of room for other cars to safely pass a Google car, no?