Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime
virginiamercury.com
virginiamercury.com
I had fully crossed the street and was walking to a nearby building when I heard someone yell "Hey" behind me.
I contemplated not even turning around, because I wanted to get to class on time, but I did ... and saw the officer standing on the other side.
He didn't feel like coming to me, so he instructed me to re-cross the street back to him.
"Are you sure you want me to jaywalk back?" I asked. "Isn't that dangerous?"
He rolled his eyes and gave me the ticket.
That's the key phrase. Police in small towns of America have nothing better to do than setup ways of levying fines against outsiders so they can afford to upgrade their cruisers to the latest dodge chargers or outfit everyone with DOD hand-me-down weaponry.
There was public outrcy about that.
https://crosscut.com/news/2020/12/nearly-half-seattles-helme...
LA is not a pedestrian city.
Glad this is coming to light and hope more places get rid of jaywalking.
Where I live there arent even roads being improved in many areas. You just drive across the dirt
None of the countries folks are comparing have close to the amount of space to cover.
Yes bigger metro areas are dense enough to have public transit... problem is most folks dont live in that area and commute in. Example ...areas like the SF bay area has folks traveling 2 hrs 1 way on train or car to get to the office
Crossing the road unsafely carries the risk of death or serious injury, who thinks a small fine is going be a deterrent when bodily harm isn't?
(Actual UK law summary: https://www.birchallblackburn.co.uk/do-pedestrians-always-ha... )
1. The construction of highways through poor (read: minority) urban areas, causing mass respiratory disease and premature deaths[1].
2. Allocation of free public space (car parking) to drivers, effectively subsidizing (disproportionately suburban) commuters at the expense of residents.
3. A general culture of entitlement to the road among motorists, resulting in tens of thousands of pedestrian and cyclist injuries a year with virtually no legal (beyond costly civil) recourse.
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/29/nyregion/29asthma.html
3) as a cyclist who transitions from commuting by bike in the summer to car in the winter, it is astonishing how my psychology is impacted by driving in the two modes. I am so much more impatient and angry from driving.
There is just a nasty psychological feedback cycle of the obvious pure potential of the automobile as a time savings device and the visceral feeling of losing that when encountering any traffic or obstacle.
At least I get the cycling part to enlighten my perspective. Most americans are car-encased permanently and oblivious.
It is an issue, and I don't want lots of cars even if electric, but if you are weighing them as having similar air pollution, it's probably fearmongering, or fantasyland where cars don't have deteriorating emission control.
One of the ways we recognize the externalities of our automotive culture is by making jaywalking illegal.
You mean the law in one municipality that hasn't taken effect yet, and that took months of LEO-adjacent protests?
We're slowly getting better, to be sure. But I don't think anybody should be content with the rate of progress.
nineplay's post seemed to me to suggest that they believe that jaywalking being illegal is in itself a way to deal with the externalities of the car culture - it seems they are happy with jaywalking being illegal. I would guess that is why they also got the down votes.
Your reply seems to be written as if you thought nineplay was praising people making jaywalking not illegal, which I believe is the wrong reading of their post.
4. Auto makers conspired to kill or cripple mass transit.
http://www.brooklynrail.net/NationalCityLinesConspiracy.html
One of the biggest is that people actually like living in suburbs, and they could afford to do so after WWII.
The promise of the suburbs is a detached house, with some private outdoor space like a back yard, in a quiet area: essentially what the rich had always preferred and been able to afford. That lifestyle became broadly available to the middle classes after WWII. It's hard to blame people for wanting that.
People still like living in suburbs. They still like owning cars. They still vote against new transit projects for a lot of reasons, but the biggest reason is that they don't want to pay taxes to support a system they would not use themselves.
So I just don't buy the idea that the National City Lines conspiracy caused our current automotive culture. I think we would have ended up with the same car culture anyway, because huge numbers of people wanted to live in the suburbs.
I have 3 major grocery stores (Safeway, QFC, Target) within 15 minutes walking from me. And at least 20 bars and restaurants within the same distance. Public transportation to downtown takes about 35 minutes, which isn't great, but it's okay. Uber works well if you need to be faster.
Wedgewood, Fremont, Queen Anne & Freelard all successfully resisted the mass redevelopment that Ballard has seen, compared to 15 years ago Ballard looks completely different while the aforementioned neighborhoods have not seen that same level of mass demolition.
Depending on where you live and where you're going, crossing the locks is a great way to bike downtown. Also sometimes the Fremont bridge route is going to be shorter. I hate riding my bike over the Ballard bridge, but I'm not sure I'd call riding on it "risking death".
Bike access within Ballard is pretty great since the hills are a bit more manageable than in other parts of the city.
All that aside, it's pretty easy to live in Seattle and not have a car, being able to walk to groceries, bars, restaurants, parks, etc.
I would highly encourage avoiding the Ballard Bridge. IMO it's very dangerous.
Walkability in Ballard is pretty good. We're within 15 minutes walking distance of QFC and the bar/restaurant area south of Market. That said, I prefer to drive to the grocery store so I can go infrequently and buy more at once.
I really don't mind the short jaunt to the Fremont bridge, but it does add some extra travel time. Never ride on the Ballard bridge; it just doesn't have anywhere for bikes to be. The sidewalks are too narrow and unprotected from traffic, and the primary traffic lanes are going 40+ mph. That whole thing needs to be replaced for the 21st century, although there may be some resistance as it's a nationally registered "historic place."
San Francisco is only about 7 miles wide. You can walk from one side of the city to the other in about 2 hours. When I lived there, I walked almost everywhere. The only times I did otherwise was when it was a really long walk (over 45 minutes), or I needed to be somewhere fast. The bus will not get you anywhere fast, it's only about twice as fast as walking. I think that's why a lot of people use Lyft. The buses are actually quite nice inside imo, they're just slow. Plus the stigma that only poor people ride the bus.
Let’s us Stockholm as an example: 100 metro stations and 170+ suburban rail stations, 60 light rail stops, on 2.3 million people in 6,519.3 km2 (2,517.1 sq mi).
San Francisco (Nine county, Bay Area), 33 metro stations, plus 87 additional metro stops about 200 station (ACE, Amtrak, BART, Caltrain, SMART, and VTA), on 7.75 million people, In 6,966 sq mi (18,040 km2).
The station density is nearly 2.5 times higher and on less than half the population.
Data from Wikipedia.
LA has no unified bus system. It has multiple ones and its super confusing. Each bus makes a stop nearly every minute, making every ride impossibly long. Lack of bus lanes make for shitty traffic stuck trips as well.
It's the same in London. That's why for longer rides you take the tube. Buses are for shorter rider or from getting from/to tube station.
That's less car-centric than America for sure. But Americans have a misguided notion that all Europeans live in quaint pedestrian-friendly town centers that look like Prague or Copenhagen. Mostly because we tend to spend our European tourism in the dense centers of the capital cities.
[1] https://www.transportenvironment.org/news/increase-paris-cyc...
In the US there are many places where the next supermarket is twenty minutes by car away and literally impossible to reach on a bike without getting run over. In contrast, even in the smallest town I've lived in, with just 20k residents, there where three supermarkets and two specialty stores in walking distance.
My worst pedestrian experience was Salt Lake City, where the footpaths stopped suddenly and without apparent reason in the middle of the residential area I was staying in. I had to backtrack and guess a lot.
Sure, the sudden absence of footpaths can happen in Europe too (I’ve seen it in Λάρνακα, Luxembourg, and Hochstadt, though never to the same extent), but for the most part even tiny villages in Europe have better public transport and pedestrian access than the various American cities I’ve visited.
Beauty is in the eye if the beholder
(You could try to find people who moved from one place to another, and ideally limit it to those whose reason for moving had nothing to do with their preferences... and poll them. I don't know how possible that is. It likely also makes a difference at what age they moved.)
I occasionally wish I had a car (say for a weekend getaway) but it’s rare enough that I’m happy to live with rentals for those occasions.
[C I T A T I O N N E E D E D]
I enjoy an hours walk with the dog daily, solid lifting program, about 20 miles a week of cardio, and a vegan diet.
Doctor thinks I'm the picture of health.
https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-t...
This is a not a living style that we can afford for everyone. Great that you enjoy it, but enabling it for everyone is simply unsustainable.
Right now you are offloading it's cost externalities elsewhere:
Cost on Your Health: More driving = less walking = decreased life-expectancy. More driving = more air polution = decreased life-expectancy
Cost on the planet: More driving = more greenhouse gases = global warming.
If you want to learn more: https://www.npr.org/2020/08/06/812199726/why-sprawl-could-be... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reducing-street-s...
More driving does not exclude a healthy walking routine.
More driving != equal more net green house gases. Yes the ICE generates greenhouse gases, but check out the carbon footprint of a battery supply chain for an EV sometime, or that of the MTA, MBTA, logistical supply chain of supplying the ENTIRE nyc 5 boroughs.
Bottom line, I'm willing to engage a deepdive discussion with critical eyes, not endure a superficial antisuburbia smear campaign while being namecalled.
Walking More driving means your natural walking related to commute and errands goes to 0. There is a reason american states have a huge obesity problem compared to lots of european countries.
Cars Are you seriously comparing the carbon footprints of a personal car compared to the metro?
More driving means more green house gases. This is not about what vehicle you use, it's about the fact that urban sprawl requires a vehicle for even the most basic errands. This is unsustainable.
Not to mention do realize people can live in cities where they walk to work, walk to the grocery store, walk to gym, and walk to a restaurant?
I really fail to see this as a reasonable expectation of dialogue and exchange of ideas if you're so cemented in your views.
That is quite a generalization. Some suburbs can be like that, with houses for miles on end and nothing else. That seems like the exception though.
Plenty of suburban neighborhoods have walkable commerce nearby. I have never lived in a city. And yet, I've never lived in a place where I couldn't walk to at least a supermarket. Currently I live in very suburban (borderline rural, really) area and nearly everything I could need is within a 15 minute walk (multiple supermarkets & pharmacies, hardware store, clothing, restaurants, movies, medical, etc.)
The no.1 factor is single-use zoning. This means people live in a certain zone, and commerce happens in another zone. No amount of personal anecdotes will affect this fact.
One could say "There are suburban areas where every trip requires a car" and that's a true statement. The generalization is not a true statement.
The reason is usually because americans seem to assume that everyone is an american, so it is to clarify that I have a non-american perspective.
You can do that and still have density. Things were built like that pre-WW2; see street view of this Toronto, Canada neighbourhood:
* https://www.google.com/maps/place/150+Westminster+Ave,+Toron...
Those houses (actually land) are very expensive now, but that's because urban living is now cool again. Up until the late-1990s they were quite affordable because all the Cool Kids wanted to live in the suburbs: downtown was mostly for immigrants post-WW2.
There's a bus line to the west of there (Parkside), a streetcar line to the east (Roncesvalles), and both of those connect to a subway line (Bloor). And one doesn't have to give up their car: it simply becomes optional for day-to-day stuff instead of being a necessity.
There's no reason why post-War suburbs couldn't have been built this way. The above neighbourhood was a suburb of Toronto and folks commuted via streetcar "to the city".
For slightly smaller sized homes, but still with backyards and laneway garages, see the next street over:
* https://www.google.com/maps/place/50+Geoffrey+St,+Toronto,+O...
After high school I moved to the inner city and stayed clear of the suburbs.
Today I'm in a walkable century old dense neighborhood in a small regional center, but have to drive to get groceries. The car can stay parked for a week.
The Power Broker, Robert Caro
Funny, those are 3 of the main reasons I live way out in the nearly-rural suburbs instead of in downtown San Francisco.
It seems like some of us have made that trade, just not in the direction you're hoping for.
And this is precisely the problem: automotive culture presently represents a massive subsidy to rural and suburban areas at the expensive of urban dwellers.
I can't possibly blame people for making that trade. But the observation is that it's sweetened by externalities that ex-urban areas don't have to bear.
Even cities with world-class mass transit, e.g. Tokyo and London, are full of cars, and taxis are still a better option for some trips -- even though there are also surface trains, subways, and buses to choose from.
In those places, step 1 has already been solved: convince the population that mass transit is desirable and should be well funded. London even charges congestion fees for cars. But they still can't achieve car-free cities.
But I agree the majority of locals don’t drive.
Anecdotally last time I was in central London I counted the vehicles going past parliament. About 1 in 10 was an unmarked car, the rest were commercial vehicles or taxis
There are major axes to accross the city with constant traffic and most bigger blocks are accessible by car (even just for deliveries). But there are pretty large areas with no car entry, and small residential parts are often shared car/bike/pedestrian zones were cars are not privileged.
I also think the goal shouldn’t be car-free, but to have clear separation of the “liveable” space with shops, parks, administrations, schools etc., and the “transportation” space with the trains, cars, cans and trucks. Speaking of Tokyo it often layers the two, with lower level streets/buses/truck roads and upper level walkable space. Seems to be the best compromise, albeit more expensive to build.
I've found Tokyo had surprisingly few cars for a massive city with high population density. Also, virtually no street parking, which makes the cityscape much nicer, and many side-alleys that are largely car-free.
That's mostly islands, here are a few cities: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/car-free-cities-of-the-w...
I'm trying to find the city in Brazil (I think is is) where they recently went car-free.
The times I've commuted into a city, I had to pay for parking, usually in a private lot. I suspect it's like this in most big cities, and in smaller cities where people still commute, parking is probably private lots owned by the employer, not street parking. Picture a standard office park.
In places with free street parking (or public lots), I suspect the population is sparse enough that the added land cost for parting isn't a big deal, most people have cars, and most people support having parking.
This is not true in Manhattan, which (to my knowledge) is the most densely populated borough in the most densely populated city in the US. Almost all street parking in Manhattan is free, with small carve-outs for meters on high-traffic blocks.
The city also has a semi-official policy of allowing commercial traffic to ignore parking laws[1]. In practice, that means trucks parked on sidewalks, with pedestrians exposed to car traffic on the streets.
[1]: https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2018/08/20/delivery-companies-pr...
Of course they support it, because it doesn't effect their wallets. But that doesn't mean that there isn't a cost to it:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking
But this is still subsidized because regulations mandate that buildings have lots of parking. These regulations are typically quite extreme with requirements intended to support the 99.999% demand case (think peak hour of black friday) conditional on a parking price of $0. Most developments build the minimum amount of parking they can by law suggesting this isn't a free market outcome.
So if you want to have business you have to provide tons of parking and make up for it with higher prices for your goods and services. This subsidizes vehicle driving over other modes a transport. Especially so because giant parking lots make it harder to reach the store front by foot.
Google Donald Shoup for more context.
Isn't this kind of leap? I've lived plenty of expensive places (e.g. downtown San Diego, Boston, Los Angeles) that had free/highways close to expensive property. What is leading you to believe highway construction targets the poor areas, other than those real estate markets are already depressed (which is possibly why poor people live there)?
Remember this happened in the 40s and 50s. Plenty has changed since then, including the gentrification of poor areas near highways. But that doesn’t change the history of the US highway system.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/03/role-of...
No. Here are two specific examples:
1. The Cross Bronx Expressway, which basically created the South Bronx[1]. "The Power Broker" by Robert Caro is one of HN's most frequently recommended books, and covers this subject (as well as other racially-motivated planning projects by Robert Moses) extensively.
2. I-65 and I-165 in Mobile, AL cut directly through the historic "Africatown" neighborhood[2]. Residents regularly complain about both automotive and nearby industrial pollution, encouraged by ease of access by the highway[3].
Most of these effects are more visible on the East Coast rather than the West Coast, since the East's older and denser cities had fewer "paths of least resistance" when building the Interstate Highway System during the midcentury. But it wouldn't particularly surprise me if the areas that are now expensive in the cities that you mentioned were originally cleared for highways under "slum clearance" or similar laws.
Edit: This is anecdotal, but I figured I'd mention it anyways: I grew up in Manhattan, and virtually everybody I grew up with has (or had) asthma. Some of that is to be expected from other pollution sources (in particular, NYC used to burn very dirty heating oil), but I also went to public schools that were directly alongside major state and interstate highways.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_Bronx_Expressway#Urban_d...
[2]: https://www.npr.org/2019/06/19/733996699/alabamas-africatown...
[3]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/26/africatown-s...
Portland's I-205 has much the same story, my father lived through that terrible process where many of his friends had their homes razed to build yet another freeway.
Links to read below. #2 specifically has moving images/graphics.
They're currently expanding... to be fair they will add a small amount of benefits to 'bridge the gap' like a small park over a new small lowered section (but i think like only a couple blocks wide).
But it's still an expansion and the construction is bringing even more problems & nuisance.
Plus mostly young, mostly white expensive new construction apartment buildings have been creeping north and displacing a lot of historically black low income families. I think infilling and repurposing some of the old warehouse type space is good but the inequity is undeniable.
https://www.hcn.org/issues/47.22/in-denvers-latino-neighborh... https://denverite.com/2016/10/08/air-quality-legacy-issue-el... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/us/denver-interstate-70-e... https://www.denverpost.com/2019/06/30/asthma-elyria-swansea-...
-Boyle Heights was a predominately Latino community in east LA, which had the East LA interchange built right through it (I-10/I-5).
-Communities along what is currently I-105 were opposed to the construction since the 1970s for the typical NIMBY reasons, and these communities were predominately Black.
And the reverse:
-CA-2 was supposed to route from Silver Lake to Santa Monica via Beverly Hills, but community opposition prevented the freeway from being built and is why there's large parts of LA (mid-city/Melrose) that are far away from a freeway.
-I-710 was intended to connect Long Beach to Pasadena, but the city of South Pasadena protested heavily in preventing the freeway from being built and closing the gap. This litigation occurred up until the late-2010s when the CA State Assembly and Governor Newsom ended the 710 project once and for all.
https://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/article237167884.html
Many other examples:
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/03/role-of...
https://www.dispatch.com/in-depth/lifestyle/2020/12/03/black...
https://catalyst.independent.org/2020/04/02/how-the-u-s-gove...
https://www.facingsouth.org/2020/06/bitter-history-behind-hi...
https://archive.thinkprogress.org/top-infrastructure-officia...
https://marketurbanismreport.com/blog/urban-renewals-shamefu...
etc
It's that joke about how real estate developments are named things like "Shady Grove" after whatever they destroyed to build it, but taken one step further.
Cut down the trees and name the neighborhood after them, then cut down Oak Street and name a highway after it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade_Avenue
Fun tidbit: there's a house along the road that is not what it appears to be:
Disastrous foreign Mid East policies to secure oil.
[0] https://sdotblog.seattle.gov/2020/09/30/washington-states-ne...
This has nearly nothing to do with automotive culture and everything to do with the system of governance in the US. In local politics in the US, your level of representation is roughly equal in proportion to your property tax bill every year. If you're renting, or otherwise in a situation where you don't directly pay (significant) property tax, your voice doesn't matter.
The rest is pretty much true, but would be worth noting that the only options for the US are for every city to have extensive sprawling underground metros interlinked by high-speed rail, or to have most people own a car and have highways everywhere. Any middle ground or half measure is untenable in our current society without causing direct, real, dire consequences to the very people you're trying to champion.
We have a much larger field of candidates running due to this program.
The driver must not enforce its priority when there is someone crossing the street at a place they should not. The price is high.
A pedestrian can cross anywhere but has priority only on a zebra crossing. They are however expected to use a zebra crossing if there is one less 50 m away. It may cost you 11€ if you do not.
The reality is of course that people cross everywhere and it takes a lot of self control not to crosson a red light when there is nobody (I did that when I had small kids to give the right example)
And typically, the forensics would try to determine if a driver that hit a pedestrian in a situation where it could have been avoided at least tried to brake.
If not, the driver would typically be charged for negligence and it would launch an investigation for murder.
manslaughter, I assume?
TL;DR If @satellite2 is, like myself, French, we do not have separate words for "murder" and "manslaughter" in the everyday language.
Longer version: we have the verb "tuer" ("to kill") which can be applied to people, flies, bears, time or boredom. It just mean to go from a state of "live/be" to "not live/be".
We then have the noun "homicide". It is never used in the everyday language (but would be in legal proceedings and sometimes on the TV news when they want to qualify the act). Its etymology is "homme" + "occire" ("man" + "old French word for kill"). It means "to kill a man". There is no connotation beside that and you add the adjective "volontaire" or "involontaire" ("intended" or "unintended") to make the English difference between "murder" and "manslaughter". And then plenty of other legal qualifications (premeditation or not etc.)
Again: this is a word you would not use in everyday conversation. Please note that there is no verb derived from "homicide". It is only a noun.
In many cases people will use "murder" to mean "someone was killed somehow", while technically "murder" ("meurtre" in French) is an intended act. But since our "manslaughter" ("homicide volontaire") is too long we use "murder".
If drivers have priority ("right of way" in USA) but cannot enforce it, then they don't really have it, do they?
It's easier to just say pedestrians always have right of way.
As Americans our priority has been individual convenience, over collective safety of our neighbors. Its shifting slowly, but for the most part this is a battle we're grappling with as a society on multiple fronts right now.
There is a middle ground: the law could say that, while you can't get a ticket just for crossing a street outside the marked crosswalks, if you do cross that way and get hit by a car, the presumption is that you were at fault--whereas, if you get hit by a car while you are in the marked crosswalks, the presumption is that the driver of the car was at fault. That would basically reflect the same presumption that is in our current laws, but it would remove the excuse for cops to mess with people when they haven't caused any harm.
Note that "presumption" does not mean an automatic finding of fault; it just means that whoever is presumed to be at fault has the burden of establishing that they weren't, if they believe they weren't. That's a common situation in law.
In short, making jaywalking itself--crossing a street outside the marked crosswalks--illegal is not about safety at all; it's about local municipalities finding ways to shake down people for money. Just like most traffic laws.
(Note that what I am describing would be the case under current law wherever jaywalking is illegal, not just under the hypothetical law I described.)
You are
Sec. 19-151. Crossing a roadway. (a) No pedestrian shall cross the roadway within the central business district other than within a marked or unmarked crosswalk. (b) Every pedestrian crossing a roadway outside of the central business district at any point other than within a marked or unmarked crosswalk shall yield the right-of-way to all vehicles upon the roadway. (c) No pedestrian shall cross a roadway where signs or traffic control signals prohibit such crossing.
I'd be wary of this. A pedestrian's position in the street is hard to prove (and defend) when they're hit by a vehicle. Say someone gets hit and is thrown twenty feet when crossing at an unmarked intersection (which in most municipalities is still a valid crosswalk). It's hard to reconstruct the scene to prove that the ped was in the crosswalk when hit. A safer perspective would to err on the side that the driver is at fault in any instance. You could also argue that the driver has assumed the responsibility of their actions and any mistake they might make before getting behind the wheel.
This is true today, so how do such cases get handled today in jurisdictions where jaywalking is illegal?
Note that I am not proposing changing the current presumptions of guilt if there has been an accident, only the rule about what cops are allowed to write a ticket for if there hasn't been an accident.
> You could also argue that the driver has assumed the responsibility of their actions and any mistake they might make before getting behind the wheel.
And you could argue that pedestrians have assumed the responsibility of their actions and any mistake they might make when they choose to walk on public sidewalks and cross public roads. I don't see that this helps either way.
other than that, sure, you're right
See my response to mulman downthread where I talk about a large disparity in costs.
Also, as I said before, this is the case today, under our current legal regime where jaywalking is illegal. So how are cases like this handled today?
We even have a few national trails go straight across motorways without crossings!
If you get hit jaywalking its your fault.
We also have stupid motorist law where if you drive in a flooded area you have to pay the cost to rescue you
Don't you need to do that anyway? Because dogs, deer, children, drunk people, etc etc.
If you hit a dog with your car it is the fault of the owner for not taking care of the dog.
I worry about children though, as we all know they are not as smart as they should be.
This runs counter to our having fire departments, public utilities, and the armed forces as just a few examples.
The majority of countries don't have laws like jaywalking yet they have similar speed limits to the US. Instead you have a mutual understanding of don't step out infront of traffic when you're a pedestrian, and look out for pedestrians when you're driving.
Wouldn't walking across the road into traffic, rather than the crosswalk, be individual convenience rather than collective safety?
I'm not too well-versed on the various American speed limits. But I can tell you the Danish ones. Here there's no concept of "jaywalking". There's simply "crossing the street", and that's functionally never illegal.
We drive 50 kph in cities, towns, and villages. That's 31 mph. On wider roads that speed is 60 kph, or 37 mph. Those are still legal to cross as you please as a pedestrian.
Our normal country roads are driven at 80 kph, or 50 mph. These have a single lane in each direction and shared with pedestrians, bicycles, scooters, and every other road-going transportation method.
The next levels of road speeds (90 kph [55 mph], 110 kph [68 mph], and 130 kph [80 mph]) are only found on roads that don't connect directly to anything used by pedestrians. Specifically, on two-lane expressways and motorways. These can only be used by cars and motorcycles.
As I said initially, I'm not too well versed in US speed limits, but it's my understanding that these speeds at least match, if not are higher, than those. In other words, there is no inherent need to slow cars down in the US to make "jaywalking" legal.
Directly across the street, with no marked crossing, was a gas station with a 24/7 mini-mart. It's a miracle I was only hit crossing that street once.
If you want to kill someone in the US it's de facto legal to do so with your car. Just be sober and say you didn't see them.
edit: No need to immediately downvote. I would enjoy some discussion.
a law against it doesn't stop that kind of person.
And the rest of the world does pretty much fine without strict jaywalking laws, which doesn't mean that there are no laws regulating how pedestrians behave when interacting with street traffic, just that crossing a street safely isn't be default illegal. (and most people have the self-preservation sense to figure that out). It's also easy to create situations where not crossing a street at all is extremely impractical, and flat-out banning it then is not a good idea.
Attitudes like that are why cars are the number one killer of small children in the USA.
I think the idea is that car drivers should be able to see a human and adequately respond to avoid deadly collision (this usually means driving slowly and with more caution in areas where there are humans. this also can mean driving a lighter/smaller vehicle but that seems harder to do nowadays with cars getting beefier over time).
Trains, after operators see an obstruction on the tracks, literally cannot respond in time.
The capabilities of trains are a lot different than motor vehicles.
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-76-the-modern...
Most states have a law that requires vehicles moving at less than the normal speed of traffic to use the right most lane that serves their destination. But the law that specifically applies to cyclists states that they have to keep as far right as practicable within the right most lane itself (with some exceptions).
For instance, here's the law [2] in New York:
>> Upon all roadways, any bicycle or in-line skate shall be driven either on a usable bicycle or in-line skate lane or, if a usable bicycle or in-line skate lane has not been provided, near the right-hand curb or edge of the roadway or upon a usable right-hand shoulder in such a manner as to prevent undue interference with the flow of traffic
They state the reason is to prevent undue interference with the flow of traffic. They don't mention anything about cyclist safety.
[1] https://iamtraffic.org/equality/the-marginalization-of-bicyc...
There are far more instances of jaywalking than police interactions, and yet pedestrian deaths are 6x higher than deaths from police. So no that is not true in any way, especially when you account for armed vs unarmed police shootings (~25 unarmed black people were shot and killed by police in 2019, where unarmed includes fake guns).
> There are far more instances of jaywalking than police interactions, and yet pedestrian deaths are 6x higher than deaths from police.
The first assertion actually cuts against your argument. If there are far more instances of jaywalking than police encounters, then even if there are many more deaths caused by jaywalking, police encounters could still be deadlier on a per-instance basis.
"And yet" is entirely the wrong conjunction here; if there are more instances of jaywalking than police encounters, then it logically follows there would be more deaths.
In fact, I'd argue that there are far more than 6x as many instances of jaywalking than there are police encounters, which kind of undermines your whole point.
Not all 6k deaths are from jaywalking, and not all 1k police deaths are unjustified so probably a poor comparison regardless
36 pedestrians were killed last year in accidents in my city. We have one contested police shooting.
31 the year before that, two contested shootings.
At least biweekly there's an article in the local paper about someone hit while illegally crossing a highway, often at night. I have unfortunately seen a pedestrian get hit by crossing on a red walk sign, luckily they survived.
Which is an indication that jaywalking isn't the real problem here, it's inattentive drivers. How many of the 36 above were similar situations?
I was making a right turn on a 40mph road on a green light. There's a crosswalk there so I checked and the crosswalk was vacant, made the turn and proceeded to get up to speed on that road.
And then immediately did a hard brake because a woman was illegally crossing the road around a bend, covered by trees, with a kid being dragged behind her, 40 feet from a crosswalk that clearly indicated DO NOT WALK.
There's a reason we have signs. Follow the signs. Having the right away is not the same as being impervious to being struck by a moving vehicle.
I walk and bike around my town a lot, and I'm very cognizant of my surroundings.
I can not even count how many times I've had people driving see me start to go in to a crosswalk and just totally blast through it, back out of driveways where I was very visible on the driver's side and not even look (TWICE only getting attention in time to not get hit by bashing on the car), people driving at high speed in to parking lots inches away.
A month ago I was walking out of a nearby park on the only road in and out, that doesn't have a sidewalk for some idiotic reason, and I had some asshole try to sideswipe me and ended up clipping me with their mirror on purpose.
Think about this next time you bring up a single instance of someone walking in a dangerous way. The design of cities in the US and the contempt of many people driving is many, many times worse for pedestrians than the other way around.
You're being ridiculous here. Nobody is asking for that, they're asking for sensible road design and sensible rules.
> because a woman was illegally crossing the road around a bend, covered by trees, with a kid being dragged behind her, 40 feet from a crosswalk that clearly indicated DO NOT WALK.
That's shitty road design (if the crosswalk is 40ft from a blind blocked corner in either direction, someone might not see it travelling at speed), and arguably careless driving - blind corners could have a deer, pedestrian, broken down car, etc.
> Having the right away is not the same as being impervious to being struck by a moving vehicle.
Right of way or not, you are the operator of the dangerous machine,not the pedestrian. The onus is on you to pay attention to your surroundings. It doesn't matter whose fault it is if you clip a child at 40mph, they're dead.
This is disingenuous.
Say for instance a person wants to die by being hit by traffic: they can jump out from behind a parked car right as the car passes. So in at least some percentage of cases, there's simply nothing even the most attentive driver could do to avoid hitting someone.
I'm not saying cars are never at fault (I walk, ride a bike, and ride a motorcycle, each more than I drive a car; I've got plenty of first hand experience with at-fault drivers) but framing it this way seems very dishonest to me.
Only a sith deals in absolutes. Just because you can't prevent someone who _wants_ to be hit from being hit doesn't mean you shouldn't be completely vigilant. As an example, it's not reasonable to expect an obstruction on highway/motorway traffic, but it _is_ on a 40mph road with crosswalks.
So you agree with my position then.
The post I was responding to was the one dealing in absolutes. I was saying that vigilance, while important, is not the only factor.
I want to see drivers be more vigilant. What I don't want is for people to defend a position that I hold, but with an argument that is easy to debunk.
Going substantially slower than the posted speed limit is a ticketable offense in most areas.
It also makes it more difficult for other drivers to judge your speed and position if you are not going either the posted or "accepted" speed for that stretch of road. This can and does cause accidents, particularly in retirement communities where older drivers slow down because they feel it will be safer.
My previous post was merely stating that driver vigilance is not the only factor in a collision with a pedestrian. Jumping out in front of the car is just one example because it's easy to visualize.
I am very much not stating that drivers are already vigilant enough. Only pushing back against a disingenuous statement. I don't want people to espouse a view I agree with (drivers should be more vigilant) with an argument that is easy to debunk.
Oh, you'd be surprised what "city activists" can devise in their stupid heads in my country. Their recent idea is: driver hiting pederastian should always be at fault, even if a drunk pederastian is suddenly jumping in front of their car, from behind the parked car or other obstacle.
That's the exact attitude that criminalization of jaywalking is teaching drivers. And that's exactly why it's killing people every day.
It's just as absurd as making a law that forbids women to walk alone at night (for their own safety) and blaming them if they break that law and get raped.
1.) If you cant see, you should not speed up.
2.) If you cant see, she cant see the crossroad either. Also, pedestrians dont are the ones with requirement to have driving license - drivers are the ones supposed to be in the know and in control.
> Which is an indication that jaywalking isn't the real problem here, it's inattentive drivers. How many of the 36 above were similar situations?
Perhaps your signals are different, but in my area a "red walk sign" means "Do Not Walk".
Your comment to me sounds like you're talking about a white walk sign, which would in fact be mostly attributable to inattentive drivers.
But if the sign is red, then while driver inattentiveness may be involved, it's not the primary culprit.
Same with people running don't walk signs. Often (but not always) they are set to be incredibly short for pedestrians and very long green for cars (to reduce traffic). This again makes people chance it.
The solution isn't criminalising it, it's building better cities.
In my own anecdotal experience, the most dangerous way to cross the road is in a marked crosswalk with a signal—as in, this is how I've come closest to death by car the most times in the city where I've been living for a few decades. Intersections with these crosswalks often have traffic coming from multiple directions, and you have to really understand the local traffic patterns to cross safely without exposing yourself to a vehicle running a red light or taking a hasty left turn without checking for pedestrians.
I would be interested to know how many of the pedestrian deaths in the statistic you quoted were due to jaywalking.
When I visited London a couple of years ago I was surprised to see that they set the crosswalk significantly back from the intersection. Meaning that a car turning actually can turn, and stop in front of the crosswalk for pedestrians. Which in turn means that the driver can pay attention to cars, decide to turn, and then separately deal with pedestrians rather than have pedestrians be part of a complicated decision.
I know of no research on it, but I have to believe that this design saves lives over the American standard of having the crosswalk right at the intersection.
Here, you cross where and when it's safe. Busy roads have crossings, because otherwise you might wait a very long time for it to be safe, but there are no crossings on 99% of streets, because you're allowed to cross them wherever you need to
The right way to fix pedestrian deaths on the streets is to slow the traffic down. It's a solved problem. It's been tested all over Europe. It works.
As a bonus you get walkable cities, less suburbanization, smaller rich-poor division, less crime in the cities, less traffic jams, more people using public transport and bikes, less air pollution and CO2 emissions.
You could solve people getting run over on the subway tracks by slowing those down too, but criminalization and station design is just a much better approach. Slowing down is inefficient and may cost just as many lifetimes, only in little pieces every day.
These stats are not an apples-to-apples comparison. You need to compare injuries per incident: number of vehicle-caused pedestrian injuries per pedestrian crossing vs. number of police-caused injuries per police interaction.
I have seen countless pedestrians walking at their top speed, the moment the walk sign turns green, only to have it turn red before they've cleared the intersection. In many of those situations where I've been driving, I've been honked at for not carelessly running down the elderly or disabled. If every crossing was long enough to permit those folks to cross in time, cities would be deluged with complaints. How many pedestrians in your statistics were physically incapable of crossing in time?
I've been nearly run over by probably a dozen cars in my life, while I've had the right of way in a crossing (my favorite being the time that a cop was looking one way and turning the other, and my timely shout saved my legs). How many pedestrians in your statistics had the right of way?
Given that non-cop/cop interactions are not risk-free, avoiding them is only sensible, as is not creating unnecessary reasons for interaction, like inventing "crimes" like this.
If you don't like thinking of cops as danger sources, then tell yourself it frees up cops for more important work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxopfjXkArM
I was telling a coworker about this once and he didn't believe me, but it was basically a deliberate and successful attempt at mass social engineering through domestic propaganda. We went from vilifying reckless drivers as "speed demons" to vilifying pedestrians as "jays" (yokels or hicks.)
This means there is no criminal record or court/jail time. It’s a ticket just like a parking or speeding ticket. I find it hard to believe people believe we should be allowed to just hang out in the street. It’s there for general safety of everyone. Could we adjust the rule to account for situations where no cars are around? Sure. But obviously we can’t have a rule where people are allowed to just cross busy city streets at will anywhere. It would be terrible for overall mobility in the city as well as dangerous.
These articles are just typical internet extremism and conspiracy theories about “Big Something”. It’s a non issue most places.
That's how many many countries operate and it's actually relatively safe.
I'm only familiar with San Fransisco, but the speed difference between a car in San Fransisco and a human is often pretty slight. Bicycles are usually the highest speed object.
Online discussion is dominated by people who are only ever in one of the above groups and wants the law to completely and totally favor them at the expense of the others. I don't think this jaywalking thing is a big deal or that much changes with/without a law.
Specifically, the word "jay" colloquially referred to a country bumpkin.
Traffic lights were first installed in cities. People from rural areas were not aware of the traffic light system and it was the country folk, not the city people, who were most originally associated with perpetrating jaywalking. Hence, "country walking".
[can't read the article because it's blocked in the EU, not sure if they covered this]
These aren't slow residential roads either, but roads around commercial centers with speed limits around 45 MPH.
> In the Netherlands, for example, traffic engineers and urban planners have actually worked to lower the country’s curbs so as to encourage people to cross wherever they like.
This I don't understand at all unless it's in low/slow traffic areas.
If you're talking specifically about urban cities, I still bet Japan/Germany have been urban planning for sidewalks which encourages "good behavior".
Exactly, which is why the decriminalization of jaywalking in those cities is a terrible idea. Orange County isn't going to be redesigned, so more jaywalkers means more pedestrian deaths.
No option is perfect, but it's layering unfairness on unfairness, ESPECIALLY considering that such laws are often selectively enforced.
I think this reflects a lot of comments, "American's are lazy" and "Look at this german punks walking and respecting traffic laws!" Is the argument US is just inherently lazy? Could there be something else at play? I think it's just that when a use case isn't a main focus of design those users will be stuck trying to hack the system or having a poor experience. USA isn't designed for walkers most places, those people will behave "badly" because of it.
Also, yes there are strip malls that bad, I can show one but then we'll be having pedantic arguments over "hey if you walk an extra 600 feet you have a sidewalk!" or something. Like, even the idea of a strip mall inherently is car centric, with most square footage devoted to parking and who wants to walk (or even drive!) through a parking lot.
If the shoe fits... I've seen too many young slightly chubby people coasting around on mobility scooters at Walmart instead of walking a few hundred meters to think laziness isn't a strong component to this sort of behavior.
I think I understand the intent of the law but I guess my own philosophy of "cross where you're far less likely to die" isn't the legal one.
Sounds like it is residential. That lady who has to risk death to get her groceries probably doesn't appreciate people going 45+ in her neighborhood.
Why should pedestrians keep out of your way and not cross your path? Why don't we instead say you should keep out of the pedestrians way and not cross their path?
Maybe we should reset the expectation that cars own the streets, and make them a guest there, deferring to human beings in the first instance.
a) Because it's the law, b) because there's a power dynamic. I can accidentally kill a pedestrian, a pedestrian can't accidentally kill me unless they throw a brick off an overpass.
> Why should pedestrians keep out of your way and not cross your path?
So that they take responsibility for their own safety.
> Why don't we instead say you should keep out of the pedestrians way and not cross their path?
Because I disagree I should be liable if someone darts out into traffic and is struck by my car.
> Maybe we should reset the expectation that cars own the streets, and make them a guest there, deferring to human beings in the first instance.
In dense cities... sure, I agree. In car-heavy suburban areas where everything is super spread out? I don't think this is a necessarily a good idea.
You even talk in the passive voice about people being struck by your car rather than you striking them with your car.
That's a shit attitude.
I would never intentionally strike a pedestrian in my vehicle, but a situation where a) I am driving the speed limit, b) a pedestrian jaywalking forces me to reflexively brake is not safe. So either the speed limit needs to be lowered, or pedestrians need to behave more safely. I would not need to reflexively brake if pedestrians waited their turn at a designated crosswalk.
Because cars bad, of course. Bicycles and pedestrians should always have the right of way in every situation, of course.
If a pedestrian is walking in the lane on the highway, it's obviously the car's legal responsibility to make way for them.
/s
There are ways for pedestrian to get small fine, but generally cars are supposed to be in control and watch for pedestrians.
This isn’t true - a street of just cars will have lethal crashes amongst themselves even with no pedestrians. A street of just pedestrians will never lethally bump into each other. The only lethal thing in the situation is the cars.
I can do that, of course, but I then become a road hazard. I find it hard to believe that the overall safety would increase as a result. I'm open to being otherwise convinced.
If somebody can dart out in front of my car, isn't that the fault of the person who darted? Or, the civil engineer who designed the road? How can you possibly say that I let myself get into this situation?
(Even if you don't care about hitting somebody, maybe at least consider that it's equivalent to having a 75 kg lump of meat fired at your car at, say, 35 mph.)
I would be pissed off if maximum speed of a train (a 20000+ bhp murder machine, by your standard) that I use to commute was lowered to some 10 kph in order to keep those candidates of the Darwin Award alive.
Being weaker (pedestrian) does not absolve you of all guilt if you decide to hazard with your life.
In Germany, car drivers must always be prepared to brake for pedestrians, including children and elderly people. Children as young as 6-7 walk the streets alone or in packs, so the kid dashing is real possibility. No one is gonna call CPS over it, schools literally recommend first graders to walk to school alone.
Pedestrian must use shortest path through street, but does not have to use crossing - you have to use crossing only if one is available within 40m or so.
The power dynamic does not really plays out. The cars are slow in cities, cross walks are everywhere.
I'd argue the opposite conclusion and say that as one operating dangerous machinery you should be given lower right of way for safety reasons. The burden should be on you to drive safely more than others to safely stay out of your way.
> So that they take responsibility for their own safety
And what about your responsibility as the person choosing to speed around in a ton of metal?
> In car-heavy suburban areas where everything is super spread out? I don't think this is a necessarily a good idea.
There's a chicken and the egg problem here. Such cities came about because of monopolization of streets by drivers. We can't change that over night but given the vast benefits of people centric urban design we should be tilting the balance away from cars and towards people.
I think this point supports the other side of the argument. The pedestrian already has a very strong incentive to be careful: they might die otherwise. Of course most car drivers would be horrified to hit a pedestrian, but most care much less about a stranger's safety than their own (and some are complete psychos who won't care unless it materially costs them). So placing the main legal burden on the driver will do more to deter risky behaviour than would placing it on the pedestrian.
I agree that the US infrastructure doesn't do enough to support pedestrian and bicycle transport. Expecting people cross only at intersections that are a half-mile apart is unrealistic. Expecting people to cross at a cross-walk that is 5 yards away is not. Crossing just beyond an intersection is the most dangerous possible place to cross due to inherently poor visibility, and all the competing demands for attention that drivers and pedestrians encounter around an intersection. This isn't a matter of rights or relative importance, its a matter of physics and human ability.
Wishing away all the cars is not practical solution, which is what your post essentially amounts to.
Look at this video's and others from this channel, to see how the netherlands builds infrastructure being more forgiving of mistakes, and find out how our cities turn out more livable:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra_0DgnJ1uQ
(Yes, i'm aware the suburban culture is different, hence the relation with cars)
There are plenty of things that could be useful, yet aren't in the context of civilized society. For instance, shotguns are useful for killing squirrels. That alone doesn't grant someone the right to use them that way at any place or time.
"Wishing" people into crosswalks is also not a practical solution.
But based on some comments in this discussion there are absolutely anti-automobile people here and they are vocal. I just responded to someone calling a car a "murder machine".
knives would be the obvious answer, though they probably don't cause as much accidental carnage as cars.
> Insisting that drivers are careful in any areas where pedestrians might be and being strict about that isn't unreasonable.
sure, but this is a vague statement that has no real teeth. everyone agrees that drivers ought to try not to hit pedestrians. what gets fiercely debated is how civil (and possibly criminal) liability ought to be apportioned.
Knives. Belts. Ropes. Electrical cords. Hammers. Chairs. Frying pans. Scissors. Etc., Etc., Etc., as nauseum, ad infinitum.
Much more info on the car free city center concept at this wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carfree_city
It really feels like you're trying to make this an "us vs. them" situation negatively, rather than understanding that it's people wanting safer, healthier, more enjoyable places to live by means of reducing car dependence.
Calling someone "anti-something" makes them sound one-sided and hostile.
I can't imagine how a "commercial center" could have a road with a 45 MPH speed limit. Lowering that to 20 would solve most of the problem.
https://www.google.com/maps/@39.17947,-77.2383268,3a,75y,359...
And here is proof the speed limit is 45:
https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1826157,-77.2383985,3a,75y,1...
Predictably traffic is safe traffic. It doesn't matter whether you're talking about pedestrians, cars or bikes, the ability to accurately anticipate other parties moves is what makes for safety.
College campuses suck so bad for safety because you have people from tons of different regions with different etiquette and standards, in a new environment and nobody can predict what anybody else is about to do. Add in the drunks and it's amazing they're as safe as they are.
1. Pedestrians
2. Bikes
3a. Cars
3b. Buses
3c. Trucks (shipping)
4. Trains
(And we're starting to get motorized bikes and scooters which might be their own category, at least by speed/power/safety measures.)
The only reason we're still arguing about the details is because everyone wants their pet favorite type of traffic to be favored by law.
> This site not available in your country
I wonder what makes that website so special it can’t comply with GDPR.
A lot of local US press seems to have gotten bad legal advice.
It's simply impossible to be aware of all the laws in the world. At some point the simplest and most realistic thing to do is to ignore what does not directly concern you.
From what someone else has commented they are accessible from Norway, so they may already be in breach of the GDPR depending on how they track visitors. Are the Norwegian authorities going after a small-ish organization from Virginia? Nope. They are not even aware that those guys exist and won't bother anyway.
I do agree with you, though, that it is absolutely fair for non-EU websites that don't want to have anything to do with the GDPR to block EU visitors.
> By using Virginia Mercury, you consent to the collection and use, in accordance with this policy, of the information you provide to us.
This means they don't comply with GDPR.
Strictly speaking, this depends on if and how they track visitors.
In practice, though, they can ignore the GDPR because they won't get into any trouble.
Could you explain why? I thought that GDPR was applicable only to residents of the EU, and blocking them was a “good enough” way used by websites who do intensive personalized data tracking to avoid having to follow it.
I don't personally approve of this way, but fail to understand why it's supposedly ineffective.
This site not available in your countryThere’s nuance, and that nuance is critical to the discussion.
We deserve a better quality of life than this. There is absolutely no reason to tolerate people behaving in this way in society. These are adult human beings with agency who should face consequences for their actions. The problem isn’t lack of investment or infra, the problem is incentivizing behavior that is destructive to a functioning society.
Edit: once you see all the ways in which our justice system protects capital, it's kind of hard to un-see...
I understand leniency if a hungry person is stealing food.
Why not make wage theft a criminal offense?
Seems like a relevant sub thread.
I get that the topic is relevant to you and you want to argue the point, but that's a different question.
Your median wage thief probably steals way more than the median shoplifter.
We have to moderate effects (or likely effects), not intent. Effects are observable while intent often isn't, and of course it's effects which actually make a difference on the site, whether intended or not.
Intent doesn't communicate itself, especially on flammable topics, so the burden is on the commenter to disambiguate it. One way to do this is to write thoughtfully and add information. Your reply here is already much better than your GP comment. This often happens in response to moderation—people respond by explaining some of the background that was in their mind but which they didn't say earlier. The thing to do is to include more of that in the first place, and then it will be clear that your intent is substantive discussion rather than provocation.
Here are some previous explanations in case they're helpful:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
Jaywalking is a ridiculous "crime", no doubt. But let's not go blame some abstract group (auto industry) for democratic society's failure.
https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26073797
And, yes. Politicians are complicit in this too.
Huh? How is enforcing people not dart out into streets and hit by cars racist or biased?
https://ktla.com/news/local-news/versace-shoe-designer-says-...
"You were Jaywalking, so I'm going to check you for Weapons / Weed / etc. etc."
----------
I think there should be some provision for Police to officially detain someone if they think there's an issue (but can't quite find a legal reason of doing so...). But at the same time, "abusing" the Jaywalking laws to do so is certainly the wrong way of doing it.
I recognize that racial profiling happens, even in urban centers where Police are given plenty of anti-racism training. I don't know what to do about that however, aside from making people at least aware of the issue.
Police need some leeway to do their job correctly. But whenever its because "I smell weed" or "You were Jaywalking", that just makes people angry and is counterproductive.
why exactly? it's hard for me to imagine a situation where a cop reasonably needs to detain someone but can't come up with even one possible charge.
I don't think I've ever met someone who has campaigned against random DUI checkpoints. You're not allowed to leave until you've completed the DUI-test at the checkpoint. There was no evidence for a crime. So under most definitions of "detained" or "detention", it seems to fit the bill.
I've heard that DUI measures can be too strict or that gaining a criminal record from DUIs is too harsh, but never really heard complaints about police enforcement of this particular issue. (DUI leading to jailtime is more of a judge / jury issue than a police officer issue anyway).
No.
I cannot say this in strong enough terms: every single person in NYC jaywalks.
Jaywalk ticketing is part of a longstanding policy of the NYPD, which is to use any occasion that presents itself to frisk people they deem "suspicious." The NYPD's definition of "suspicious," in turn, looks a lot like a colorwheel.
I'm sorry, but what exactly are we supposed to derive from this claim? That unprompted police frisking under the pretense of jaywalking is acceptable so long as the jaywalker is a member of a vulnerable class?
Do you have a citation for that? Apparently, another poster did[0] have a citation.
In a three month period 80 people were cited for "illegal crossing" in a city of 8.5 million. I can tell you that at least half of those 8.5 million folks jaywalked in that same period.
I've lived in NYC since 1966 and I've never seen anyone receive a citation for jaywalking.
What's more, "jaywalking" in NYC is generally referred to as "crossing the street."
In the busiest of intersections, it's often useful to wait for the light, but that's no guarantee that the operators of vehicles will yield -- even if the signal is against them.
As such, I generally don't even look at the traffic signals; I watch the traffic coming my way and only cross if it's safe to do so, regardless of the status of the signal.
In fact, crossing at a marked intersection with the signal is no guarantee of not getting struck by an automobile. I'm at least as vigilant when crossing in a crosswalk with the light as when I cross against the light or in the middle of the street.
[0] https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2020/05/07/nypds-racial-bias-in-...
Edit: Added link to answer my own question about citations for jaywalking and added ancillary verbiage as to the rarity of such citations.
No. The argument is only effective for crimes that a large percentage of people do frequently but which is only seldomly enforced with criminal sanctions.
And I am hard pressed to find any crime fitting that description that I would not be in favor of eliminating. I'm perfectly happy to start with jaywalking.
Is it just because jaywalking is hardly a crime, thus its only conceivable utility is in discrimination? I'm just trying to understand what you're getting at.
The fact that their discretion overwhelmingly leads to the racial bias described, shows a situation where police behaviour needs to change.
It's important to highlight it for this reason.
I'm generally opposed to such racism, but it's not like there is a good alternative in these times. It's unfortunate that the campaign against police unaccountability has crystallized around "Black Lives Matter", but it's hard to dispute that Blacks have been feeling most of the pain. If "All Lives Matter" were an alternative non-racist campaign against police unaccountability then we could debate the merits of each. Alas it's just a reactionary stand to maintain the status quo.
Lower-class people tend to walk more for reasons related to expensive car maintenance. Are blacks more often lower-class? Sure, but that’s a different issue entirely.
>From Jan. 1 to March 31, the NYPD wrote 80 tickets for illegal crossing — less than one a day in a city of more than eight million people — and only one went to a person identified in police logs as “white.”
So unless you think the "lower class" is 98% people of color, it's clear that the bias here is race-based, not inherent in the population.
[1] https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2020/05/07/nypds-racial-bias-in-...
It’s a nice talking point, I’ll grant you, but it won’t hold up to scrutiny on HN.
Are you seriously proposing that 98% people of color could be a representative sample of jaywalkers, or are you a bad troll? That pretty clearly shows a bias in the level of policing.
As I said, all you have to do is spend an hour (or even ten minutes) in midtown Manahattan to see that everyone jaywalks all the time in NYC.
In fact, we don't call it jaywalking, we call it "crossing the street."
And the fact that out of 8.5 million people, only 80 were cited and 79 of those were people of color (and all 80 male), it's not only obvious that such citations are motivated by something other than "routine" law enforcement, but it's clearly just a trumped up charge to stop someone they wanted to stop anyway.
Spend an hour in midtown Manhattan and you'll see that's absolutely the case.
> All but one of the jaywalking tickets issued by NYPD cops in the first quarter of this year went to blacks or Hispanics
https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2020/05/07/nypds-racial-bias-in-...
https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/epi/databrief8...
Edit: See also - loitering.
But I think it's also just ensuring a ready and plentiful supply of fines for fundraising.
That's exactly why it's phrased as reducing encounters with police, because police encounters are disproportionately negative (or hostile) for people of color. Has nothing to do with the actual infraction.
Of course, you'd know this if you'd paid any attention to the news, considering it's currently the third most major political issue US.
OK, let's go back to this. You can argue right-of-way with a ton of fiberglass and steel going 35 mph. Tell us all how that works out for you. Placing blame doesn't mean anything when the laws of physics dictate which one's going to be the winner in any given scenario.
("Cars ought not hurt people who have the right-of-way, therefore they won't.")
Maybe the vehicle should be smaller, instead of ever-larger SUVs and trucks.
Maybe there should be crosswalks and signals.
There's nothing in the laws of physics that dictate that roads should be hard to cross on foot, and that cars should move at their current speeds, and be designed the ways they are. Those are all choices.
Shooting someone is still a crime, even though the laws of physics dictate that the bullet is going to win against my flesh. Right-of-way is a normative statement, not an extension of physical laws.
Maybe they shouldn't be going that fast in areas with pedestrians?
Some of those things have heavier penalties than others.
For example, speeding rarely renders one a quadriplegic.
As a driver though, most roads to my right have the right of way. So if there is a road to the right where the view is blocked by some bushes or a house ... I will slow down just in case a car could pop out of there. That is what right of way means.
I also do this for zebras. I will slow down just in case, unless I'm sure that no one could possibly cross.
For only a moment, my brain thought you meant that Norwegians riding zebras had the right of way, but half a second later my brain realized they could no longer be considered pedestrians if they were riding an animal. Is "zebra" the real term for "crosswalk" and I've been wrong my whole life?
Context for those who don’t know: zebras are crosswalks.
Which, I guess, is why I felt so comfortable while in Paris. Exactly the same is true in NYC.
This has nothing to do with advocating that pedestrians start stepping out in front of cars. Take a moment to understand the issue before deploying your straw man.
Before the advent of the automobile, you had carriages drawn by teams of oxen. If there was lesser risk to pedestrians, it's because the oxen themselves don't enjoy walking on humans. Irony being that the automobile places more responsibility on the driver, who (ITT) sees an opportunity for manslaughter as a justification for manslaughter.