Caution: Confused Canadian Crossing the Street

Since I was a child, I was always taught to look both ways before crossing the street; I used to be one of the several "traffic guards" in elementary school ( we got to go to the movies at the end of term if we were crossing guards). I kind of think of myself as an expert in the "crossing the street" department- or so I thought....  Traffic here is scary.....In Heidelberg Ontario there was no traffic, so to start this one lets back up to my time in small town Nova Scotia. If you even LOOKED at the road, people would stop for you JUST IN CASE you decided that you wanted to walk across the street. I always thought that was funny but I loved the fact that pedestrians owned the town. You almost got to places faster by walking then by driving. Then I moved to to big town  Nova Scotia and drivers would stop for you but not always instantaneously, they were more likely to stop if you were at a cross-walk. Now I live in big city Wales and I have stepped back into my childhood self, waiting for my parents (my classmates) to tell me when it's safe to cross the street and I am not ashamed to ask for the help!
The cars here will not stop for you. If you are in the way they will honk and hope that makes you move fast enough  that they wont have to slow down. There are blinking crosswalks here but many of them take a long time to change and even when they do, unless you are standing right at the edge, drivers ignore the fact that its not their turn to go.
I went into lab the other day and on my way into the classroom and was making small chat with my lab instructor. This is how that conversation went:
"How was your weekend?"
"Boring I did a lot of work- how about you?"
"Not good actually, I got hit by a car."
What! The rest of the story was what you would expect of a story of a person on a bike being hit by a car, however the added extra was that the car driver didn't stop and yelled out the window with some profanity that it was not his fault (by the sounds of it, it was). I should mention at this point that my lab instructor was OK. His bike was not. Point of story; when visiting Cardiff walk with the locals until you catch on and always wear a helmet when biking. Lets just say I am happy to know I have a health plan and some patient classmates.