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Comment by athrun | Hacker News Reader

Looking at the intersection [1], what a badly designed mess it is! You have 2 bike lanes disappearing into the intersection without any sort of protection.

Cars can be parked right up to the ped crossings, potentially obscuring what is happening. Looks like a death trap to me.

At a minimum, raising the crossings so that cars have to slow down, and having no parking zones in front the crossings would improve the situation by a lot.

Humans make mistakes all the time, intersections should be designed to accommodate that.

[1] https://maps.app.goo.gl/KUka4HGt5AsVxFjo7

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> Cars can be parked right up to the ped crossings, potentially obscuring what is happening. Looks like a death trap to me.

California recently made it illegal to park within 20 feet of a crosswalk:

https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/news-and-media/dmv-highlights-...

SF hasn't started enforcing the law yet, and I suspect that 99% of drivers don't know about the law.

They haven't started enforcing it because you can only issue warnings if people park close to the crosswalk until next year - specifically because most drivers don't know about the law.

And the law actually states that local authorities can come up with their own distance rules instead.

> They haven't started enforcing it because you can only issue warnings if people park close to the crosswalk until next year - specifically because most drivers don't know about the law.

OK, I see that now:

  (4) Prior to January 1, 2025, jurisdictions may only issue a warning, and shall not issue a citation, for a violation unless the violation occurs in an area marked using paint or a sign.

But honestly I often see cars stopped (waiting, not parked) in red zones and have never seen them get a ticket or even asked to move on.

> And the law actually states that local authorities can come up with their own distance rules instead.

I didn't know this!

  (B) Notwithstanding subparagraph (A), a local authority may establish a different distance if both of the following requirements are met:
  (i) A local authority establishes the different distance by ordinance that includes a finding that the different distance is justified by established traffic safety standards.
  (ii) A local authority has marked the different distance at the intersection using paint or a sign.

I wonder whether (n)(1)(B)(i) is, in practice, a high bar.

I doubt the bar is particularly high and the onus is on the city to create signs/paint curbs to indicate if it's longer or shorter.

As it stands, if there's a red curb or parking prohibition sign already next to a crosswalk, it dictates distance - whether longer or shorter - and there are a lot of intersections with those already that are much shorter than 20 feet - like where fire hydrants often are. If SF doesn't repaint/resign those, then nothing happens.

It's only for unpainted/unsigned areas where the 20 ft rule comes into place.

They don't have the "you're required to know the law, 15 days after it exists" law? Odd.

It's actually a legal principle in most countries. Hence my surprise. But keep flagging :)

Outside areas with dedicated parking enforcement patrols, do police actually issue tickets for parking within distance of thing?

I ask because, here in Indianapolis, on my heavily-trafficked mixed residential/commercial street, drivers routinely ignore both painted curbs and painted parallel parking space markers for days at a time and seem to be rarely, if ever, ticketed for doing so.

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