California greenlights jaywalking. It’s a step in the right direction | Hacker News Reader

California greenlights jaywalking. It’s a step in the right direction

washingtonpost.com

79 pointseternalban107 comments

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.

While you need to look multiple ways when crossing near an intersection, the cars are usually slower when crossing it, especially when turning.

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.

I get angry whenever I leave the house, because the infrastructure in my city is clearly designed for cars at the expense of the local pedestrians.

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?

> jaywalking is out of control.

This is propaganda. The very term "jay" ("crazy") walker is propaganda invented by a car seller.

In reality,it's the cars that are out of control.

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.

ehh, Bostonians literally ignore traffic signals and routinely cross when the car has a green light then start swearing when they almost get hit

Same. I found people would scowl if/when one would cross against the light but no cars present. So it definitely is a thing in Bavaria at least.

I noticed the same thing in Berlin, even when it was just me and a couple of other (usually older) adults.

Relevant: https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history

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

Cars already stop at intersections which makes them the perfect place for cars to stop to let pedestrians cross.

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.

Not all intersections have lights.

That's because jaywalking has historically been used as a pretense to false arrests by the police in the US.

Speeding is way more common in US/Canada and the roads are really wide. Most don’t have a central reservation.

I cross the street, intersection or otherwise, assuming that unless eye contact and acknowledgment have occurred, I am invisible.

I looked up how liability would be distributed if a jaywalker gets hit by a car and found this: https://www.mcreynoldsllp.com/hit-jaywalker-at-fault/

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."

> if a jaywalker

That is a car seller's propaganda slur for "pedestrian" or "human in a natural non-vehicular state".

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)

More road rules should be like that.

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.

In Chechenya there is a traffic light in red 24/7. It's there only to make you guilty when needed.

I’m afraid jaywalking ordinances do get enforced, even in urban California. The city of Pasadena was known for this, e.g., https://www.pasadenanow.com/main/police-write-138-tickets-du...

One for Glendale: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskLosAngeles/comments/ueu5lc?s=8

A few in Burbank: https://myburbank.com/burbank-police-target-unsafe-pedestria...

I had buddies in high school get cited for jaywalking across Fairfax Ave in LA.

They gave fake names to the cops and got away with it. Well done, legal system.

Is it worth the risk to give a fake name?

Maybe as a high schooler (presumably) in the 90's. In today's world, probably not.

Almost certainly not. They did it anyway. I wasn't there.

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:

eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf2cbIgEP08&t=6s

It's a crime because of regulatory capture by car sellers stealing our public roads from the people.

It would be wonderful if one day such a concept was ancient and foreign.

Long ago on Castro St in Mountain View I was returning from lunch and took my first step to cross a road with a red light.

A cop was on the corner and struck the pole with his nightstick as soon as I entered the road. I took it as a threat and retreated.

Asshole.

It's not a crime. It is a misdemeanor, as in, it will never land you in jail.

Misdemeanors are still very much crimes.

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).

Cringy/pandering, yes. Something to do with turning a news story as boring as 'It is now legal to cross the road.' into a 832 word salad.

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.

I don't understand how people who believe we have too many pedestrians killed by cars could also think this is a good thing.

“Every step that is ‘jay’ is defiance in the face of the automobile machine.”

huh?

https://unevenearth.org/2022/02/a-jaywalking-manifesto/

Headline might as well end in "and that's a good thing." Why can't they stop editorializing everything?

Content in the opinion section is almost definitionally editorialized.

The entire article is purposefully full of puns. I imagine the author was walking on sunshine.

Puns and an entire superfluous rant on other CA laws

And chock full of a repeated slur for "pedestrian".

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.

>frequently, if not always

When you're making sweeping generalizations and arguing in near absolutes, citations are very much needed.

Check out the statistics farther down this page from the campaign that pushed for the law change.

https://www.calbike.org/freedom-to-walk-campaign/

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.

I see nothing about rates of jaywalking tickets, just racial comparisons (done quite crudely as well).

How many actual jaywalking citations are given? That would be a good place to start?

You’re right. I misspoke. Black people are only 400% more likely to be stopped than whites for jaywalking. Ticketing is not mentioned.

Wouldn’t that statistic still support my assertion that jaywalking is used as a pretext to harass certain populations?

That’s a very different problem. The law not being applied fairly is fixable.

That is a good thesis statement. Go ahead and finish the essay.

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 can’t be searched (beyond a pat down for weapons) when given a jaywalking citation.

A pat down for weapons _is_ a search!

They can do a pat down during ANY encounter. You don’t need a citation to do it.

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.

> CA doesn’t prosecute major crimes like burglary, shoplifting or drug possession.

One of those is not like the others...

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.

In my city, a few thousand per year (although the latest stats I can find only go up to 2020)

Downtown Los Angeles sometimes goes of sprees of jaywalking enforcement, but only in downtown. Never saw it enforced anywhere else in the city.

What's the impact on liability if you hit a pedestrian under this change?

I'm thinking of all the ludicrous dashcam vids from Russia where people weakly fake getting hit by a car.

Pedestrians only have the right of way when they use a cross walk.

This is not true. It is not legal to mow down a pedestrian as way from a cross walk.

It's not legal to kill someone in a car who entered an intersection who didn't have the right of way.

The middle of the road seems like it would NOT be a much safer place to cross than at intersections.

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.

What percentage of pedestrians killed by motor vehicles in any recent time window of your choice were jaywalking when it happened?

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.

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