Step, Check, Step: How to Edge Out

I was taught by a native cantor bridgion when I first went to live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that the way to cross the street in Cambridge is to edge out. That means stepping into traffic and fixing your gaze on a driver in a car and just forcing them to stop by sheer eye gaze. What you're basically saying is I'm more vulnerable than you are, but you aren't allowed to hit me. There's another way of expressing it that I read in a book on recovery from sexual abuse, which is just fraught with shame because people always blame the victim.