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Comment by jawns | Hacker News Reader

My first year of college, I was cited for jaywalking. I was walking across a barren street in our small college town on my way to class, and there was a town cop standing against a wall of a nearby building waiting for an easy catch.

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.

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My boss decided to jaywalk an otherwise empty street in downtown LA during a conference (not a big deal where we're from). When he got to the other side, a cruiser pulled up onto the sidewalk blocking his path, and the cop got out and berated him while writing him a ticket. Crazy and overzealous to say the least, but we still haven't let him live it down to this day.

Before corona I visited some colleagues in LA for a knowledge transfer, as they were handing over ownership of a whole bunch of infrastructure to me. As we were walking to lunch, I couldn't help noticing that they very clearly and insistently walked as far away from the street as they could. Very edge of the sidewalk away from the street. They warned me about cars never looking when they turn, etc.

LA is not a pedestrian city.

I got a ticket for jaywalking when I lived in downtown Washington, DC about 15 years ago. The officer asked to see my license (what if I hadn't had one?) and wrote a ticket, but as a warning with no fine. Said it was the first sunny day of the Spring and the city had him out to try to cut down on tourists etc. wandering around and possibly getting hit by cars.

Generally in the US you are not required to carry identification but you are required to give truthful identification information when asked by a law enforcement officer. If you didn't have your drivers license that day, you likely would have still received the warning ticket. If you lied about your identification, you may have gotten away with it but if caught in that lie, the consequences would have been much higher than a mere jaywalking ticket.

The cops love issuing jaywalking tickets in DC, it's a tradition. Quick story: about 10 years ago I walked over to the Library of Congress with two friends from Virginia, and we walked across the street in the middle of the block. There was an officer way down on the corner and he screamed at us "HEY! No jaywalking!" and we hustled across as quickly as we could and went inside the library, looking at each other with puzzled glances. It never occurred to any of us that we simply couldn't walk across the street, and all of us are from the northeast US corridor. I'm a US citizen and that was the first time and the last time that anyone has scolded me for jaywalking (just so the EU people reading this understand: it's not usually enforced here except in the biggest cities).

Is jaywalking illegal all the time? Here it's only illegal if there's a crossing less than 50 m away.

> small college town

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.

Police in small towns are mostly fine and don't care about petty stuff because they have meth labs and whatnot to give them perspective. Police in wealthy suburbs, rural retirement small towns, tourist destinations and college towns are mostly not fine because they don't have much Real Crime(TM) to give them perspective.

Yeah right. Except that if you drive around the country enough you’ll find out that speed trap towns are usually small towns with nothing better to do. One pharmacy, a subway, 2 gas stations but 5 cruisers waiting for you to go over the silly 30mph limit imposed right after the crest of a bridge.

What is WITH that subway? Military bases, small towns, everywhere.

They're the franchise with the cheapest entry fee other than Chick-fil-a.

Speed traps aren’t because they have nothing better to do, it’s because it’s a non-trivial revenue stream for small towns that get a decent amount of through-traffic.

I've never seen it happen in a college town. See comment above. Usually the only place jaywalking in enforced is in the really big cities, especially Washington, DC.

I remember story about woman who got hit by speeding car along with her kids who got hurt badly or died. They charged her with endangering kids, but not the driver - crossing was over half mile away.

There was public outrcy about that.

It’s like interfering with a police investigation, it’s only illegal when the police decide to enforce it and want a reason to stop someone. If it’s a baren small street then I say it’s harassment. If it’s 3rd Avenue on a Tuesday, then maybe it’s for safety sake. The issue is that Jaywalking is applied too unevenly it’s laughable

related, in Seattle it's generally only illegal to not wear a bike helmet if you're homeless

https://crosscut.com/news/2020/12/nearly-half-seattles-helme...

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