California's Broken Jaywalking Law | Hacker News Reader

California's Broken Jaywalking Law

systemicfailure.wordpress.com

51 pointscozzyd65 comments

Anecdotally (I'm posting this to see if I'm the only one who's noticed), there's something culturally (or legally) unique about jaywalking in California.

The ambiguity of countdown timers should have been a problem in every city/state that put them in. But I can't imagine reading this article about anywhere else because everywhere else, everybody jaywalks all the time and the laws are rarely enforced.

But relatively nobody jaywalks in CA. A few years ago I was in downtown LA very early in the morning, standing on a street corner with five or so other people who were all patiently waiting for a green light to cross a completely empty street. No cars in sight. For someone from east of the Rockies, it's actually kind of surreal.

Why is jaywalking such a big deal in CA?

I definitely don't think it's just you. Once, when I lived in the valley, I was at a restaurant on one side of the street and wanted to go to a shop across the street, but it was the middle of the block and I didn't feel like walking to the cross-walk. The road was 3 lanes in either direction, but there was a wide grassy median, so I did what I've always done growing up in NYC: I crossed the near 3 lanes and waited on the median for the traffic in the other direction to clear.

Well, apparently the sight of a pedestrian in the median was unexpected enough that every driver in the far 3 lanes slammed on their brakes immediately, stopping traffic right in the middle of the block. It was as if they expected that I was just aimlessly wandering across the road and would step out into oncoming traffic if they didn't stop.

Of course, I think at least part of the problem is that pedestrians, in general, are so rare in CA. I used to live ~1 mile from work and would walk in regularly, whereas co-workers who lived half that distance would always drive (and don't get me started about the difficulty walking after 9 pm when every lawn sprinkler in the valley would unleash a deluge across the sidewalks).

> and don't get me started about the difficulty walking after 9 pm when every lawn sprinkler in the valley would unleash a deluge across the sidewalks

This problem is not unique to California. I felt the same during my stay in Overland Park, Kansas (a small suburb close to Kansas City, Missouri).

What was also noteworthy to me was how downtown kcmo was different when it snowed. They usually (always?) cleaned the sidewalks in downtown kcmo. However, Overland Park sidewalks were grossly neglected with snow from the streets often piled on the sidewalk with no apparent concern for pedestrians.

Even worse, you get to street that has no sidewalk at all, you cross and the other side has no sidewalk either. Literally no sidewalk on either side of the street!

Welcome to 90%+ of the US.

I live in a fairly rural city and drive a stretch of road every morning with no sidewalk and lots of walkers in the grass. And the speed limit is 65. I'm constantly worried some idiot will wander onto the road.

It's truly amazing how powerfully people can be conditioned by the government and law.

Refuse to talk to cops (always, not just about jaywalking).

Do not provide ID ever (unless driving, since it also happens to be your DL) and do not answer questions as to whether you have ID.

The amount of paperwork they'll need to fill out in order to arrest you (and thus allow them to search you [the claim will be that the search is for weapons for their safety, but anything they find is free for them to use/look at, incl your ID, if you even have it]) makes it not worth it for them. They'll just find a stupider victim.

Disclaimer: IANAL, but i do often end up in court with cops over a lot of things, this included, and have not yet paid any fines

This isn't really an endorsement though is it. IANAL and I'm not often in court with cops and I say cooperate they're people too. shrugs

They're...people who want to point guns at you and steal your money? Why would anyone want to cooperate with people like that?

In my experience, American cops are indeed 100% people, but a significant proportion are not good people. The worst, most vicious people I knew from high school became policemen. There are no standards. The police admit any ol' gun-fetishist idiot who wants to beat up "hippies and negroes". It barely even matters if he can hold a gun straight, because there are no standards and no accountability.

I agree with grandfather here. Do not cooperate with law enforcement when you have an option. This does not mean be rude to them or try to be difficult. It just means that you have to assert your rights. Any cop who does not respect a person's rights does not, in my eyes, deserve cooperation.

Of course, almost everyone would love to help the police with their investigation as much as they can but in a litigious climate with plea bargaining (and not to even talk about the illegal quotas that officers need to meet), I am simply not convinced that there is enough incentive for law enforcement to get the right person.

Life is not CSI. Cops are people too. They want to go home at the end of the day. I am not saying all police officers are corrupt all the time. I am simply saying most of them are overworked (and perhaps underpaid) a lot. If you think about it from this perspective, I hope you'll agree that not asserting your rights and helping law enforcement is a terrible idea. There is a video on YouTube that talks about the same thing. If they tell you the investigation is not directed towards you, have them give you something in writing (make sure your lawyer reads it) that grants you a full and unconditional pardon. Of course, they will not grant it.

In case of jaywalking, I'd say the law is flawed. If the people who allocate resources for law enforcement think that it is enough of a problem, they should allocate enough resources to cover for people's right to refuse to identify themselves unless presented with a warrant.

In the same vein, I really wish that the monies from fines and tickets not go to the police or to the general treasury at all. I wish we treated such money as bad money. I don't know what we'd do with it but doing any good with bad money taints the good efforts and will eventually rot the effort. (E.g., civil forfeiture in the incredibly stupid war on drugs)

IANAL.

I applaud your courage to stand up to that but I don't know about following the advice after reading "i do often end up in court with cops over a lot of things, this included"... Confused.

I do the same to protest stupid laws.

> Do not provide ID ever (unless driving, since it also happens to be your DL) and do not answer questions as to whether you have ID.

Isn't it technically illegal for an adult not to have ID on them?

EDIT: I found better documentation on this.

Some US states require ID.

> The person approached is not required to identify himself or answer any other questions, and may leave at any time

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_and_identify_statutes#Stat...

http://www.quora.com/In-the-US-under-what-situations-are-you... --old:

Depends. A quick google found this: http://www.flexyourrights.org/faqs/when-can-police-ask-for-i...

> As of 2013, 24 states had stop-and-identify laws. Regardless of your state’s law, keep in mind that police can never compel you to identify yourself without reasonable suspicion to believe you’re involved in illegal activity

No states require an ID card. Some states require you to provide ID information, and may detain you as long as necessary to determine your identidy. Thus detainment is often used as an unofficial punishment for not providing an ID card.

There is no form of ID required to walk around in the US. If I am not driving I don't have to carry my DL.

If a police officer asks you to stop and what your name is, you ARE required to ID yourself in most states but not to prove it via ID.

> "Stop and identify" statutes are statute laws in the United States that authorize police[1] to legally obtain the identification of someone whom they reasonably suspect has committed a crime. If the person is not reasonably suspected of committing a crime, they are not required to provide identification, even in states with stop and identify statutes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_and_identify_statutes

WARNING: If you are in IL you a required to state your name, DOB, and home address.

Only if cops have reason to believe you have committed or about to commit a crime. They are NOT allowed to lie about this suspicion if you ask them directly!

This is a bit like keeping speed limits down at 65 mph (a standard set when car technology was 50 years less mature).

It's another way that the state can selectively punish most any citizen at will, within the bounds of law.

Yes, I agree. The flow of traffic for most commuters, like myself, seem to around 75 mph.

"The speed limit is commonly set at or below the 85th percentile operating speed (being the speed which no more than 15% of traffic is exceeding)[41][42][43] and in the US is typically set 8 to 12 mph (13 to 19 km/h) below that speed." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limit

On the other hand, if the speed limit was set at 75mph, would that remain the common speed of traffic, or would the common speed increase with the limit?

On the Autobahn people drive at infinity km/h

Could you convert that to mph please?

infinity mph

The maximum speed there is 1, in natural units.

Speed limits are 70MPH, 75MPH even 80MPH in some places in the US, apparently.[0] One could probably look at percentages of speeding tickets and reckless driving violations compared to states with lower limits and get some interesting results.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_in_the_United_Sta...

It would increase up to the point where people wouldn't feel comfortable driving faster.

There's a huge benefit to this: there would be less inconsistency between driving speeds. It is more dangerous when someone is going 85 and someone else is going 65 compared to 85 and 75.

The most dangerous is when one car is much faster than the others. There is little difference in terms of the chance of a crash if everyone is going 65 or everyone is going 75. The crash is more likely to be serious, but at least the people who are speeding are less likely to plow into someone when they're distracted.

car technology was 50 years less mature, but are our brains any better? There's a lot of studies showing the strong correlation between speed limits and car accident fatalities, even recently

I became much more skeptical about correlations after I read somewhere that cholesterol might be not a cause of heart disease, but rather a part of the body's reaction to heart disease. For some reason, that example just hit me really hard. People think that they can make causal conclusions from observed correlations, but they are wrong.

As a rule of thumb, any correlation observed in the wild has at least three equally plausible explanations, two of which are tailored to the narratives of the two main political parties.

The funny part is that it's also illegal for a car to make a turn through the crosswalk while pedestrians are anywhere in the crosswalk. This is far more dangerous than jaywalking and happens routinely. The law covering this is rarely/never enforced.

Otherwise, what’s the point of having a countdown signal?

It tells people currently on the crossing how long they have. If they're infirm, they may be better off waiting at a traffic island than trying to rush across. The red hand is pretty clear - it means "don't start crossing", not "start crossing if you're confident you can make it in time" (though that is the way the countdown is used).

$200 is a ridiculous fine, though - that's over 20 hours work at the minimum wage.

Agreed; this isn't at all ambiguous. If you were allowed to cross, it would be a walk signal with countdown.

No other place treats it that way (and most police departments have better things to do than to target pedestrians).

To the best of my knowledge, that's the meaning it has in Portland, and many other cities. (Now, on the other hand, I don't think that's vigorously enforced.)

Not if you take the walk signal to mean "it's safe to cross right now," which is not the case if you're on the curb and there's one second left.

You also clearly haven't spent much time in L.A...many of these signs flash the walk signal for literally 2 or 3 seconds before beginning the 20 second red countdown.

What's wrong with 2-3sec? That's plenty of time to start walking if you are paying attention in traffic.

Some intersections I cross in Chicago have the walking man for literally one to two seconds before it starts the blinking hand or countdown (typically in the 10-15 sec range). This is barely enough time to enter the intersection, even if the individual is paying complete attention. Given this, I'd never even considered that it could be a fineable offense to begin crossing when the countdown was happening.

That is a joke -- people walk at different speeds. Walking in carland is enough punishment. The worst are burbias where the walk signal never comes on if you don't press a button.

Walking in carland is enough punishment

LA was the only place I've ever been crossing the road with the valid pedestrian signal and had to stop walking or I'd literally walk into the car turning across my path (to the right, with the same green light I'm crossing with). It happened a couple of times, and I was only there for one week.

You have never been to china before. Here crossing the street is a game of frogger.

No it wouldn't. Around here I know of many intersections that only display the walk signal for a second or two before going into the countdown, such a short time that you can miss it if you briefly glance away. I pay attention to crosswalk signals and spent months training my dog to do the same so that he sits when we arrive at a crosswalk. When the city is setting up the lights so that they change in the time it takes to walk a single step then your interpretation isn't reasonable.

Yet the countdowns are also at intersections that have no middle place. In such cases, it's a binary decision, made for people of all ability ranges. The countdown provides no useful information to act upon and should thus be removed.

Though I agree - there should be some way to indicate "do not attempt crossing, even if you think you're so fast." Perhaps adjust the countdown and keep the hand for several seconds more than it is currently.

What does a median have to do with it?

The countdown allows me to choose to cross if there are 20 sec left (enough time for me to get across anything less than an 8-lane highway) or not to cross till the next light if there are only 3 sec left when I reach the curb.

With old-school flashing lights all I know is that the light will change soon, but gives me no idea HOW soon. In pedestrian friendly cities generally people will cross if it's flashing (esp. on a narrower street) because they have right of way. Heck, most of us will cross a one-way street AGAINST the light if the nearest oncoming car is a third of the way down the block. That's not the least bit dangerous and doesn't interrupt the flow of traffic.

But the countdown occurs while the hand for no crossing is showing and that's jaywalking. Unless the point is to say "don't cross, unless you're fast". After the hand goes up, it should be just don't cross. Otherwise people will mostly try to outrun the light, especially in the US as there is little fear of a stopped driver hitting you (vs, say, Latin American countries).

Yes, the flashing hand (countdown or not) has always been a warning that the light's about to change (like a yellow light for cars). Before the countdown clocks, it was meant to say "don't start crossing" but in most cities people didn't interpret it that way and would start crossing if they were fast walkers. Even if they didn't know how much longer it'd be flashing. The countdown clocks add that information so they can make an informed decision.

I agree that LA shouldn't have bothered with the countdowns if they're going to consider starting across the intersection after the countdown has begun to be jaywalking.

Maybe the problem is the length of countdown timers? I don't know how they are determined and set but anecdotally I often see 10 seconds or sometimes others in excess of 15s or even 20s on a road that takes ~5s to cross.

It seems to me like this is a reasonable law IF the timers were set to only give the pedestrians minimal amount of time to cross the street. Given it takes 5s to cross, timer starts with 5 remaining. Pedestrians in the road see it and rush to either side. Pedestrians about to enter the road will have an easier decision to make: I can't make it in 5s so I wait. Obviously some will think they can, then fine them; I think that's reasonable. But holding up pedestrians with 20s remaining seems unreasonable to me.

The main problem I see is for slower pedestrians; seniors, handicapped etc. They might need more time and could be caught of guard in the middle of the street with no time remaining... An immediate thought would be a white flashing hand as a warning that time is running low (no counter!)... Probably requires lots of reprogramming though.

I can make it in 5 seconds, some grandma can't. Shouldn't it be based on your speed, not the timer?

It might just be that the car traffic signals are patterned to last that long, so the pedestrian crossing signals are the same length to match. But that would depend on the crosswalk.

$190-250, sheesh - that fine amount is far to high. The maximum parking fine in LA, for parking on a red curb, only costs you $93.

I recently got a $197 ticket for crossing a marked crosswalk in an uncontrolled intersection on foot.. In front of a cop car. There was no danger, but he accelerated at me in the intersection causing a "hazard". Nailed me for CVc 21950(b). It's a racket - they're scumbags. If I didn't work in tech, that could be a very difficult amount to deal with.

Wish you fought that, since the cop broke CVc 21950(c).

Obviously this thread needs a link to this article for anyone that missed it a few months back :)

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

As a Bostonian I find the idea of jaywalking fines quaint.

As an Englishman I find the idea of jaywalking quaint

As a Bostonian I find the idea of heriditary rule quaint.

Technically they don't rule, they're just a prominent part of a network of very rich and well-connected families that move in the same social circles, go to the same schools, give each other jobs and sometimes intermarry. Luckily Boston has nothing like that.

I was in San Fransisco this past January, and I was actually stopped by an officer for crossing when the hand was blinking, even though I made it to the other side in time. I think it was a matter of the officer not having anything better to do, since it was 8 in the morning. I didn't get a ticket because I answered his questions politely, but I'm sure if I was still in high school, I would have been a smart-ass about it.

Got a ticket for $205 while working in LA. Definitely felt like a cash grab.

What's interesting is that cities have found that countdown timers cause drivers far up the block to race to beat the green light before to turns yellow/red, which then causes collisions with bikers and pedestrians.

which cities? I haven't seen this behavior around Boston and the drivers are nuts around here.

I haven't seen this behavior with cars; but, as a cyclist, I use them to figure out if I can make it through an upcoming intersection or not.

What's annoying is the lack of a standard action when the countdown timer reaches zero. At some intersections, the timers are set so that the yellow light is the last second or two and zero is when the traffic light changes to red. Other hit zero and then the traffic light changes to yellow. Some hit zero and a number of seconds pass before the traffic light changes to yellow.

It makes as much sense to ticket pedestrians crossing during the countdown, as it would to ticket drivers for entering the intersection during a yellow light.

The fact that there is such a thing as 'jaywalking' is a broken aspect of modern society.

I'm actually OK with the enforcement. The politicians should do their damn jobs and update the laws. The police shouldn't have to maintain a list of exceptions in their heads.

... and yes, this is a car culture thing. Most of the broken laws relate to bikes and pedestrians in the places where I have bothered to look.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com