Sure, they were pro-active about it, but let's face it: It was going to happen anyhow. This just accelerated things.
It's not a crime to "jaywalk" in the UK, and I quote it as the concept simply doesn't exist here.
Also, in the UK, if you are crossing a side street and a car wants to turn into it, officially speaking, the pedestrian has the right of way[1].
[1]https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/using-the-road-...
Edit: Seems it's a real mix, some there are none, others have it, some have it but it's never enforced and some countries have laws that only apply within a certain distance of designated crossings:
In the UK it is very common to cross even if the man is red. I've been in walking conversations with continental Europeans in London, then suddenly noticed they aren't at my side any more because they stopped at a crossing that was clear.
There is also evidence that doing away with the aggressive use of traffic furniture to separate cars and people leads to safer driving. This also reduces the risk of people being crushed against railings and so on.
I think your reasoning belongs with whatever lies behind the need for the "State law: Yield to Pedestrians in Crosswalk" signs[1] which I find confusing in the USA. In which states am I not supposed to yield?
[1] https://images.roadtrafficsigns.com/img/lg/K/Yield-To-In-Cro...
Everyone has a duty to try and prevent an accident if possible, but you do generally get to trust that a green signal means no pedestrians are going to dart out.
Giving a green light when pedestrians actually have right of way is incredibly dangerous. Why not a 4-way stop or uncontrolled to avoid a false sense of security?
No. That is unreasonable for children, the blind, the intoxicated, the mentally ill, the distracted and the reckless.
It's fine for the driver to be annoyed by having to slow or stop, but they absolutely must do that whenever it's necessary.
> "GREEN means you may go on if the way is clear." [1]
The second part very important. You must always be able to stop the car within a visible distance, and green traffic lights don't change that.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/light-signals-c...
//Edit, I stand corrected. It's a very minor offence, costing you 10€ if there's no signal, if there's a signal 5€ if traffic is endangered and 10€ if an accident was caused. 10€ for crossing the Autobahn (or, more likely, your life)
I think you should probably know better than to try and generalize all of Europe on a topic like this.
On the other hand if you go to France everybody crosses everywhere all the time and most drivers won't stop to let you cross on a walkway unless you're already on the middle of the road. I don't know if jaywalking is an offense over here but if it is I have never ever seen it enforced. You could jaywalk right next to a cop and nobody will care.
When a pedestrian gets hit by a car, the driver is responsible, crosswalk or not, unless the pedestrian was drunk, or actively trying to commit suicide (but good luck proving that).
It is if on a designated motorway, motorway slipway or any other highway designated as a 'special road' under the Road Traffic Act 1984.
If a person uses a special road in contravention of this section or of regulations under subsection (2) above, he shall be guilty of an offence.
Pedestrians still have right of way in almost every situation. Also note that bicycles are vehicles just like cars, and they must obey the same rules.
It is illegal to ignore a red light, although I can't figure out if there's a law forcing you to use that crossing.
And there is probably some kind of law against creating dangerous situations, but that's not exactly a law against jaywalking.
edit: OK, yes, obviously you can and should distinguish between streets and roads, the former being smaller and mainly for residents and visitors of a subsector of the area (who can play hacky-sack on their residential street if they so well please, and you still have to wait for them), and the latter being mainly for car transportation in and out of the area itself. You can prioritize humans in one and cars in the other.
https://lsmlomza.pl/pliki/2014/03/lsm-znak1.jpg
And it basically means that pedestrians have an absolute priority before cars, they can walk on the street as much as they like and you as a driver have to exhibit some extreme attention because if anything happens, it's 99% certain you will be found at fault.
The picture is an adult and child playing on the street. This street is for adults and children to play in.
In practise, in countries where it's less common it will have a text description, and you'd then recognize it abroad even when you don't understand the text: http://www.highwaycodeuk.co.uk/uploads/3/2/9/2/3292309/publi...
Circular blue must be done. Pedestrians must use this path: https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/footway-sign-picture-id...
Red-bordered circles forbid something: https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/no-pedestrians-road-sign-253...
And red-bordered triangels warn of something: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Singapor...
You should now understand all the road signs used outside the USA and Australia :-)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_street
In Europe you have to demonstrate knowing traffic signs before you get a driver's license. They usually are graphics, not text like in US.
I'm unaware of any state in which you don't have to do the same to get a learner's permit.
Test questions are a mix of obscure regulatory stuff (e.g. "what is the penalty for a 1 time DUI if the offender is age X and they have had Y speeding tickets in the last $X months?"), identifying signage (e.g. "a do not enter sign is what shape and colors?") and describing the appropriate action in a particular situation.
>They usually are graphics, not text like in US.
Literacy is technically optional to read signs in the US as well. Only auxiliary information is communicated via text. You'd just spend a lot of time waiting around when you could take a right on red or do a lot less sitting at red lights depending on whether you acknowledge the presence of signs you can't read.
Driving is more important to being a functioning member of society so in general we make getting a license easier and don't bend you over quite so hard if you do things wrong on the road. It varies a lot by state.
Warning of children in/near the road: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/04/Ma...
There's a design language you learn: circular for mandatory, triangular for advisory, square for informational. Blue background for positive, red border for negative.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verkehrsberuhigter_Bereich#/me...
The official meaning is "begining of a traffic calming area" (verkehrsberuhigter Bereich) but most people call it "Spielstraße" (literal translation "street for playing"). I don't know if the sign was designed after the common term for those streets or vice versa.
As for the obscurity: A lot of traffic signs are, you learn their meaning in driving school.
The idea is that this is an area where people live, and where cars, playing children and pedestrians can be expected to mix. To drivers this is a strong indication that they need to take great care when maneuvering because just about anything can happen. Typically the sign is accompanied by an explicit speed limit of 10 or 15 km/hour, or, alternatively it is encoded in the local bylaws but that doesn't really help for visiting traffic.
The whole idea behind traffic signs is not that you can decode them if you have never seen them before (though that is a nice benefit if you can have it) but that given some basic rules and a small booklet of those signs you can learn them by heart and the basic rules will help you to distinguish in case you forgot a sign or weren't sure.
As such this one is pretty clear, all the elements on it are also present on other traffic signs and the blue rectangle tells the rest of the story. As a driver I have no problem understanding this sign in isolation without looking up its definition, the sign is also common enough around here that you can understand what it means by the context within which it is placed.
It's fine. It's just not the kind of sign you are thinking of.
There are at least two kinds of sign.
One kind tells you what the rules are or gives you specific instructions. An example of this kind of sign would be one that tells you that you must wear ear protection, or one that tells you that you must wear a hard hat.
Another kind tells you that you are in a region where a special set of rules apply. Examples are construction zone signs and school zone signs. These signs don't tell you WHAT the rules are, they just tell you that you are entering a place where the rule set changes from one well known set to a different well known set.
From what others have said, it seems this sign is the second kind. It's telling you that you are entering a region where the streets are shared more equally between cars, pedestrians, and playing children than they are in most places, and so you need to follow the rules that apply to such regions instead of the regular traffic rules.
Incidentally it drove me crazy when I saw big red X's in circles upon moving to a place with European signage. It always felt wrong to proceed, when in fact the sign means don't stop. https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/50403/what-does-t...
In practice, many drivers do not like them, but it's probably because they are never pedestrians in those places. I often drive, bike and walk in the place shown above and I really find it nice, even if you sometimes have to wait for a minute or so for pedestrians to cross.
I work in and regularly travel through towns and cities that have various streets and junctions marked with the "shared space" designation for about five years now. Said towns and cities have furthermore had pedestrian precincts for decades.
Coventry's plans for pedestrian precincts go back to World War 2; it has had one since 1953. Exeter beat it by 1 year.
* https://www.historiccoventry.co.uk/postwar/postwar.php?pg=pr...
Any realistic plan includes high quality public transit, with at least some of it at street level.
New technologies require new ways of organizing things, in the same way nothing is expected to take precedence from a train in a shared crossing. It is technologically infeasible
Did the automakers invent 'crossing a red light' as well? Did they invent the parking meter?
I think it's pretty clear by now that organizing whole cities around the automobile was a huge step in the wrong direction and the sooner we begin to correct it the better. Just look at Copenhagen as a shining example of a city that began re-focusing its traffic on actual people (and not f*ing metal boxes taking up way too much space) decades ago.
It can help, if it means parents feel less need for private gardens.
The fact that you're not prioritizing the car doesn't mean you can leave pedestrians and cars to self-organize
And if one insists on moving a 2 ton metal cage through a city going 30 mph or more, I think having to wait now and then is a reasonable trade-off. The natural habitat of the car is the highway and that's where it should stay.
For me personally it's a great injustice that cars are so valued that I am supposed to breath one of the worst kinds of air pollutions every other morning for 180 seconds while waiting for red light at just one intersection.
If the law recognizes some kind of duty to yield and let traffic through, we’re back at status quo.
The article didn't prove that car manufacturers created jaywalking laws. The best they came up with was that they were involved in helping shape the laws that governed road. And why wouldn't they?
No doubt there were a number of different factors that led to current jaywalking laws. Auto manufacturer influence was just one of them.
But it makes for a much compelling story to simplify the issue and just call out one party.
* http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1982/1163/contents/made