I also don't have a lot of strong distinction between them. I've seen a lot of places where both are tagged with most of the data, this populates data for the way, and so could be represented in the pedestrian network, as well as for the node, which can be represented in the auto network, which is why I suspect both get populated so much. The tags there's more consideration around are kerb and tactile paving tags, which can be ambigurous (e.g. barrier=kerb on a way would indicate there is a kerb along that whole way) https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:crossing#Accessibility