>Its less common now in France. Your see a lot of signs saying Vous n'avez pas priorite.
>Still can catch you in towns sometimes.
>
>What are the rules on the crossings for pedestrians. Do you have to give way.

I don't have a clue :). Trying to move around as a pedestrian, you get to cross the road in two kinds of places: small streets or major thoroughfares. The small streets are usually easy, as they mostly don't go far, they end in a bunch of dead ends and parking lots, i.e. they are used only by those who live there or deliver to them.

At a major road, you may even have a zebra painted (almost never on all four legs of a crossing, but rather on three - can't figure that one out), and quite often a button to activate your light in the next cycle (which works in about 10% of cases - not enough people walk and even then few of them complain, so it never gets fixed). If you don't get your light, you either rely on the lights for your direction, or cross the road peacemeal, pausing at every patch of non-drivable soil as you go. Because it doesn't really matter whether you as a pedestrian have the right of way or not, it's that the crossing is probably designed for speed, and you don't have a chance of being seen by a regular car in the middle lane if there are three private tanks in the right lane hiding you. You cross when you can, and if no "ped xing" sign around, where you can.

Two big exceptions to this are the parking lots and Manhattan, and probably a few others I don't know of. In shopping malls, you can never park near the building - that's the fire lane, and kept uncluttered at all times. On that lane, pedestrians are absolute rulers.

On Manhattan, everyone has sort of European reflexes and eyes on their backs, they just feel the light without watching it, and collectively start crossing at the right time - and they usually get the (white, not green)light a few seconds later.