I've never understood this attitude to crossing the road. In every European country, you simply cross the road if you can get across to the other side safely. If there is a signal, you can use it to stop the cars. The middle of the road seems like it would be a much safer place to cross than at intersections in many instances as there wouldn't be people turning unexpectedly.
There was a study of traffic savvy animals (feline and canine mainly) some years ago who roam freely, gps trackers were attached and they would predominately cross roads only away from intersections, for the reason you cited.
Why watch four or so directions when you could only watch two?
I think the study had a name like the secret life of pets, except that's a recent cartoon movie, so may have been the hidden/secret lives of dogs. I searched but can't find it, though I'm relatively sure it was on US 60 Minutes at some point.
Just to state the "obvious": the reason people cross at intersections is because that is one place on the road where there are stop lights! Well, usually. It's banking off of existing stops for cars.
It's funny to think about how the grid layout of cities like NYC mean that it's too tempting to just put crosswalks at intersections since there are so many of them, but in other cities you often have crosswalks away from intersections as well. Some of them have lights associated with them.
The fact of the matter is that no matter how careful a pedestrian tries to be, given how roads tend to be often used by cars if you don't want to wait around for 10 minutes having cars yield in one way or another is important. But given how dangerous intersections are in general, I wonder how much safer it would be to just paint a lot of crosswalks _everywhere_ and apply the whole "you have to stop if someone looks like they're crossing" logic.
There's all sorts of ways to make crossings safer. One can raise crosswalks, add bulb-outs to intersections to give cars better sightlines in an intersection and slow them down, push most pedestrian collision liability to the driver, add traffic lights, place Pedestrian Hybrid Beacons/HAWK signals, etc etc. There's a lot of fascinating resources on this stuff.
In the US the problem is that most traffic engineers and local politicians are skeptical that anyone will do anything but drive. When proposing pedestrian-oriented changes most local politicians and engineers will place vehicle throughput above pedestrian safety.
EDIT: I don't mean "will place vehicle throughput above pedestrian safety" in a conspiratorial way. I mean legitimately, they'll balk at slowing down car trip times or having to field angry motorist resident complaints to help save pedestrian lives. Many of them genuinely don't think that people walk unless they have no other option (perceived homeless, mentally ill, disabled, etc.) or are out for sightseeing.
I found that Germans in Berlin got quite annoyed at me, an American, when I’d cross an empty road against the signal. They’d point at the “red man” and scold me. It was quite amusing coming from Boston where jaywalking is out of control.
The only situation where Germans would generally scold someone for crossing at a red light is when a small child is present. There is a widespread norm not to cross in that case, because children are considered less capable of making the judgement call and should rely on the lights, so it's bad to act as an example to the contrary. This makes sense to me. In other situations, it is considered mostly acceptable in my experience.
Not German, but I've stopped and I increasingly get angry when people cross at red lights on busy (from the pedestrian side) streets that don't have lots of car traffic. This is because I see it almost daily: someone looks, makes the determination that there's no car close and it's safe for them to cross. Then, 3 distracted people DON'T look and just see the person who started to cross, and start crossing themselves thinking it must be green or safe. And then a chain of people jaywalking WITHOUT looking starts and at some point a car approaches and it's no longer safe to cross.
So I've stopped jaywalking when somewhere where others could distractedly follow me, and I give angry glances at people who do. Sure, it's not my responsability to make sure others aren't distracted, but since I am aware of how people really are and I can avoid causing issues by just following the established signals, knowing I'm not responsible is not going to make me feel much better if someone gets run over following me.
What you said would make sense, but normally it was just me and a bunch of adults. I’d be the only person crossing while they stared at me. This was a few years back so maybe things have changed recently?
A lot of Berliners will cross against the red man but not if children are present, because it sets a bad example. Were the scolds parents with their kids in tow?
Boston has uniquely crazy walkers. I know because I was one of them. The narrow winding streets and masshole drivers turn the city into an entertaining game of frogger.
I live near a four way stop intersection where my wonderful neighbors and visitors usually don’t use turn signals and often don’t yield right of way. So I just cross in the middle of the road away from both intersections because the car behavior there is so much more predictable, even though I don’t have right of way.
I would 100% support some kind of automated system for issuing tickets for people who don’t use turn signals at intersections, similar to red light cams. I would even pay to install them myself if the price were reasonable
That's not my experience - too many drivers that are turning right will roll through intersections, looking in the other direction to check for oncoming traffic.
Additionally impatient drivers often pull up into the crosswalk, forcing you into the intersection.
(Please don't do this, it will not get you to your destination any faster, it just creates danger and confusion. Especially for cyclists and wheelchair users.)
While this is a problem, there is also the problem of drivers not having sufficient visibility from behind the crosswalk due to parked cars or bushes or trees, forcing drivers to encroach in the crosswalk at some point.
Why do you need visibility left or right to come to a stop at a red light directly in front of you? :)
When the light changes, or you're in the right turning lane, sure you need to go over the crosswalk, but that's not what I'm talking about.
Once a driver was even gently sliding into the crosswalk, looking at their phone, while I was directly in front of them. They looked up and made eye contact with me, and I watched them realize with horror that I was there. (I was fine)
In the US, you can usually make a right turn on red light if there are no oncoming vehicles.
So you stop at the stop bar, before the crosswalk. No one is walking in cross walk, so you inch into crosswalk to see if there are cars, and then you might see a line of cars, and by the time they are gone, someone might want to walk across in the crosswalk, but your car is in it.
Obviously, one can simply not turn right on red, but that is not how most people drive.
This problem is actually unavoidable at intersections with stop signs on one road but not the other road, which is where I encounter it most. There, drivers have no choice but to encroach into crosswalk to see.
Highlighting some parts of my previous comment you may have missed:
> When the light changes, or you're in the right turning lane, sure you need to go over the crosswalk, but that's not what I'm talking about.
I routinely are drivers going straight or left pull into the crosswalk. It may be more visible/memorable to me because I do a lot of walking, so they're often in my way. I don't know your situation, but if you're mostly driving, it may not be visible to you (because you're not at the front of the queue) or memorable (because it doesn't cause you to change your route).
I see people do crazy things all the time just out of impatience. People even fully enter the intersection sometimes (when they're going straight and have a red, and people turning currently have a green arrow), it's nuts. And then people will pull up behind them, locking them in. So if someone ran a light, there would be no way to avoid a collision. (Obviously you shouldn't run lights either, but people do.)
My philosophy is that any complex system can suffer at most 2 faults without a failure (as a rule of thumb). So when people push the boundaries like this, they're expending the buffer we need to avoid collisions caused by honest mistakes. If someone pulls into the intersection, someone pulls behind them, and virtually anything else goes wrong, there will be a collision.
I'm British? If you mean have I left the UK, yes. I've been a lot of different places and what I mean is that the idea that it should be illegal to cross the road even when there are not any cars is a bizarre US thing.
You should visit Berlin, Vienna, or anywhere in Japan.
Though Japanese culture is not likely to tell you directly that you shouldn't cross against the light. You will see the natives wait very patiently at an empty intersection waiting for their turn to walk.
You may also want to visit New York or Vietnam a place where people cross between moving traffic.
The US and Europe are very large. There is no federal US law about Jay walking and lumping it all together because a few places are strict about it is odd. It's like thinking all drivers in Europe drive on the left side of the road because you only visited London.
I’ve not visited Berlin (though I have spent time in other parts of Germany). I would find it hard to imagine that a person would get in trouble with the law for crossing in the middle of a small street or other very normal behaviour. I’d make a distinction between “crossing at a red signal” and jaywalking (crossing where there is no signal). There are certainly places in Europe I’ve been where the former would be frowned upon, but nowhere where the latter is.
New York is kinda the example of the weirdness I’m getting at. People do cross wherever they want to, but it’s illegal and people do get ticketed for it.
I noticed that in Japan (specifically, Kyoto, where I lived) that people would wait for the light to turn green … but, if I made the first move and crossed on red, most of the other folks waiting would happily follow.
It reminds everyone that just because you can observe a behavior like obeying a rule, does not mean you can make assumptions about the cause of the behavior.
Maybe they respect rules, or maybe they simply herd and don't like to stand out.
Or "you can't make assumptions" means who knows maybe something else entirely like it just never ocurred to anyone.
Or maybe "don't like standing out" is yet another merely a behavior with a presumed cause. Maybe they avoid standing out, but not because they don't like it, but because it's penalized. And so on.
I've spent years in both Paris and London, and agree with you. Sure there are roads & times when you'd be an idiot to try to cross through traffic, but unless you're only there as a tourist for a few days then it's pretty easy to figure out what's safe and what isn't in both places.
> You should be suicidal to try and cross the street outside of crossing in cities like London
Have you ever been? This isn’t true at all. Obviously not at rush hour or on a busy road, but apart from that walking in and across the road is very common.
Quote:
"California follows a comparative negligence scheme. That means that a fact-finder (a judge or jury) will look at the actions of everyone involved in an accident and determine the percentage that each person is at fault. If a plaintiff was 40 percent at fault for the own accident, then their total injury award will be reduced by 40 percent.
If a driver hits a jaywalker, it is clear that the pedestrian was at least partially at fault for the accident. That does not, however, mean that the pedestrian was entirely at fault. If the auto driver was speeding, intoxicated, passing on the right, distracted, or otherwise driving negligently, then they may share fault. A judge or jury will weigh the actions of each party and the circumstances of the accident to determine each party’s relative fault and will adjust the potential damage awards accordingly.
If you were driving and a jaywalker jumped in front of your car, causing you to hit the pedestrian, swerve, crash your car, and injure yourself, you may have a personal injury claim against the pedestrian. The same analysis described above will ensue: Were you acting negligently? How negligent was the pedestrian? Who really caused the accident? A dedicated California car accident lawyer can evaluate your case and determine whether you, as the driver or the pedestrian, has a valid claim against the other parties involved and whether your potential award is likely to be reduced as a result of the comparative levels of fault."
Okay we need to dial this back a bit. Everyone is safer when drivers only have to worry about pedestrians in the road at specific marked points.
Jaywalking the crime was/is intended to protect pedestrians from “it doesn’t matter if you legally have the right of way if you’re dead” which is why it doesn’t change the law for drivers.
"Pedestrian" or "human in a natural non-vehicular state" aren't specific enough to our conversation. "Jaywalker" is accurate and everyone understands what jaywalking means.
I live in Virginia which the article mistakenly claims to have legalized jaywalking. Jaywalking is still a crime in Virginia but is now only chargeable as a secondary offense.
Virginia doesn't have partial liability in most civil cases. If you are partially at fault to any degree, you will not receive any damages. I know someone that was hit by a drunk speeding driver on a motorcycle but received no civil damages because they were jaywalking and therefore deemed partially responsible.
>I live in Virginia which the article mistakenly claims to have legalized jaywalking. Jaywalking is still a crime in Virginia but is now only chargeable as a secondary offense.
That sounds perfectly fine. Do it right, all is well. Do it wrong and cause problems you pay up for the problem you caused and for trying to pull a move your were not competent enough to pull off (jaywalking, in this case)
We'll look back one day and wonder how this was ever a crime. This is a symbolic move, since it rarely gets enforced. But needed nonetheless.
Now let's get municipalities to put those lights that detect when a pedestrian is crossing so that motorists have better visibility. Tons of crossings not connected to the street lights that need this.
> This is a symbolic move, since it rarely gets enforced.
Except if you're in a poor part of town. "Rarely enforced" laws are absolutely evil in my opinion, because it means they are really only enforced when convenient to meet other ends.
Take anti-sodomy laws before Lawrence v Texas. They were also "rarely enforced", but were conveniently used to call out gays and lesbians as "criminals" whenever it suited some bigoted politician.
They may have made some sense "back in the day", when pedestrians weren't used to car traffic, but these days perhaps they are just used as a pretext to search someone for contraband and check if they have any warrants:
Does this piece strike anyone else as cringy? Seems like the author went out of his way to include as many California tropes as possible, to the point that I had to Google him to check if he was born in CA or not (he was not).
I have to think that the governor weighted the pluses and the minuses before he sign the bill. I'm one that believes that making everything illegal eventually leads to people ignoring the law so this is not a bad thing.
Unfortunate we will see a lot of news about people dying because they jaywalked. I hope they start a campaign to make people aware of the dangers of jaywalking before that happens.
CA doesn’t prosecute major crimes like burglary, shoplifting or drug possession. How many people have gotten ticketed for jaywalking beyond the rare exception?
I jaywalk all the time, even in front of cops and nothing happened.
This is like legalizing pot in CA. It’s just updating the law to reflect enforcement.
That's because jaywalking is frequently, if not always, used as a pretext to stop and investigate someone for purposes of harassments or profiling.
Do you dress well, and generally look like a law abiding citizen? I'll bet you never get stopped.
If you wrapped yourself in blankets and started pushing a shopping cart in an affluent area, you would learn all about laws that you had no idea existed.
Black people are 4.3x more likely to be stopped and ticketed for jaywalking than the white population as a whole in San Diego, and 3x - 3.7x more likely to be stopped in LA (depending on where).
These discrepancies, and use of the jaywalking rules as a targeting mechanism, were one of the very reasons for the change in law that this thread is discussing.
You can get a ticket, of course. But it's also Yet Another Pretense to do a search and (for example) find drugs on you or whatever.
"Well don't have drugs on you and you'll be fine" what is the point of search warrants then? Jaywalking is not the only thing like this, but it's among a list of many things that police can use as a green light to do a reasonless search for... well, based on their gut feeling that they are looking at A Bad Guy.
There is perhaps a deeper argument about maybe not saying that doing a minor infractions should allow police to search you for other crimes, but absent that at least getting rid of pretexts for people to just automatically lose their rights for behavior most people are doing on a daily basis seems like a good idea.
You’re dancing around one of the issues here, and that’s selective enforcement. When laws like this remain on the books, they can be used to target specific areas or segments of the population. That’s one reason that it’s being removed.
Huh? Jaywalking is not a felony, it's a traffic violation. You'd get a ticket. There is no criminal trial. This is like saying CA doesn't fine people for speeding.
Jaywalking laws are probably enforced whenever they're convenient to enforce, i.e. against undesirables.
I still would feel safe and like the government isn't out there to make my life hell in CA. People's life get ruined by the state just for the fun of it in many other places, especially anywhere in the south like arkansas, texas, missisipi,etc... the cruelty is just overwhelming.
When I first saw the long encampment of homeless people in venice/santa monica (and LA in general) it felt horrible but then I am wondering if those people are better off than poor folks in some other states.
Yes, most of my life. CA is the best place I have been to in the world but I think locals get used to the nature, climate and nice politicians too much so they complain. The people part you are right, always overcrowded but still most coastal folks are nice (regardless of sincerity) central/valley and eastern folk are more like texans but not quite as much imo
Personally I've had some of the rudest encounters of my life with strangers in SF. Conversely some of the nicest interactions I've had with strangers have happened in the Eastern metropolises. I would probably attribute this more to randomness rather than one side of the country being nicer than the other.
East cost, especially NYC was very unique for me, folks would act nice but try to appear rude. Like scream at you over something and then help you with it. Of course terrible peope anywhere you go on the planet but just restaurants and public employees in CA were night and day for me at least.
Plenty of open drug use in developed liberal countries. If europe had a nice climate there would be a lot more people there and shitting on the street as well because in their developed sense, public toilets cost money!
Being developed isn't about a few rich people getting richer but the quality of life getting better for everyone. If CA was its own country other states wouldn't be able to ship their homeless and troubled folk, yet it still remains pleasant and richest state.
I can't speak for the UK, but in The Netherlands the driver is virtually always considered to be at fault - except extremely rare ones where the driver could not have possibly anticipated and/or avoided it. To give an example, hitting a child who suddenly runs onto the road is the driver's fault, as children are well-known to be unpredictable and do stupid things.
But no, insurance fraud like that does not really exist here, probably because there is nothing to gain from it. We don't do multi-million-dollar lawsuits for things like emotional damage, and liability is just a thing between your insurance and theirs.
In New Zealand we have a government organisation called ACC (Accident Compensation Corporation) which provides insurance for accidents and injuries. It prevents you from suing in this case:
"ACC is the sole and compulsory provider of accident insurance in New Zealand for all work and non-work related injuries. The corporation administers the ACC Scheme on a no-fault basis, so that anyone, regardless of the way in which they suffered an injury, has coverage under the scheme. Due to the scheme's no-fault basis, people who have suffered personal injury do not have the right to sue an at-fault party, except for exemplary damages."
It doesn’t seem likely that a minor misdemeanor jaywalking ticket, very rarely enforced (at least, as far as I have seen), would really budge the needle either way as far as the overall frequency of jaywalking is concerned.
So rest assured. Your precious insurance premiums are safe.
Wasn't there just another story from the last day or so about how there are too many pedestrians killed by traffic? Doesn't that make this a big step in the wrong direction?
Before jaywalking, cars were demonized as rampant killers in USA. There were efforts to ban them in cities entirely. Certain interests didn't want that, so 'jaywalking' was invented - suddenly cars were not the invader in the pedestrian's street, it was the other way around--peds were now interlopers unless explicitly instructed by car infrastructure. This led to cars going faster in urban environments, with more infrastructure for cars while pedestrians got smaller and smaller slices of the street to use. This series of events is a huge cause of the current state of high pedestrian deaths by traffic. Legalizing pedestrianism is one move in a larger strategy to unroll the mistakes of the past and reclaim the most valuable parts of our cities for humans once again.
No, because "jaywalking" laws never really made people safer... There are obviously many problems to solve, but having crossing the street in many areas criminalised doesn't really help with any of them.
Why did this need to be an opinion piece. Is there some danger to hearing about a piece of legislation without being explicitly told how to feel about it?
Noticed this with the other WP story on here. "people are spending their time alone, we should reverse that". Sad that people feel the need to consume content that has to instruct them on the interpretation of everything lest they think a wrong thought or spend some time alone without guilt or something.
