First, let's not forget that jaywalking is one of those "crimes" that is used as a pretense by police to harass people, usually young people and people of color.
Second, as a veteran jaywalker, my rule of thumb is that if a car has to hit their breaks even a little, or otherwise alter their trajectory, you're doing it wrong. The goal should be smooth movement for all.
Third, just because someone else is jaywalking does not mean you should follow them! Always asses your own path because someone else may be timing it differently.
> First, let's not forget that jaywalking is one of those "crimes" that is used as a pretense by police to harass people, usually young people and people of color.
"Walking while black"
Recently saw a courtroom video where a black man was being charged with marijuana possession. The reason for the initial stop was jaywalking, but the cop didn't even ticket him for the jaywalking, just used it as a justification for performing a search.
Judge threw the case out. Scolded the cop for clearly just wanting a reason to search a black man, evidenced by the lack of a ticket for the jaywalking.
And of course, it's just wild to me that in some states, you can get thrown in jail for YEARS for simple possession of a single nugget of marijuana, while in Oregon, my grocery store receipts literally have ads for marijuana dispensaries on the back.
> rule of thumb is [...] trajectory [...] The goal should be smooth movement for all.
A more restrictive one is avoiding driver cognitive load and distraction. City driving can be exhausting. And attention budget allocated to one concern, is less available for that other thing that's about to unexpectedly bite.
> just because someone else is jaywalking does not mean you should follow them!
Another is attending to crossing as broadcast group communication. Manhattan pedestrians waiting at a light, will, quite reasonably, cue on the motion of others. Thus I might do a red-light crossing at a sprint-and-jog, solely to avoid misleading others with a "people are starting/walking across now" cue. Especially with tourists, and anyone with attention prioritized elsewhere.
Another is to threshold on benefit. Judgement errors will be made, so gate on the current case being worth that. There are people I can't comfortably walk with, because for low-payoff diagonizations, or avoiding a moment of red-light repose, they fountain social cognitive load with abandon. The pedestrian equivalent of car high-acceleration and speeding for negligible marginal progress.
Yea the herd mentality is why jaywalking is unethical. I've witnessed someone try to cross early, triggering literally ~20 people to follow, only for the light to change and everyone collectively realized they had no right of way and stepped back.
It's easy to see how this could result in tragedy.
Germany, Japan, there is strict social compliance so it feels right anyway.
In Germany, crossing at a red light is very frowned upon. Many Germans even wait at a red pedestrian light in the middle of the night when there's zero traffic.
Crossing streets in places without pedestrian lights or designated crossings is very common, though, and I believe usually legal. (I certainly haven't heard of anybody being fined for it.)
I don't know about ALL of Japan, but in Tokyo, pedestrians frequently ignore red lights and seeing cars with green lights waiting while a large group of jaywalkers is crossing in front of them is not an uncommon sight.
It's not about class, it's about staying alive. Cars win any encounter, hands down. My rule of crossing streets is to assume I am invisible and the drivers are not aware of my existence. This is, IMO, the only safe rule to follow when crossing the paths of fast moving, multi-ton machines with only minimal requirements made of the driver.
One time when I jaywalked in NYC I could have sworn that a cab, who was a half block away, accelerated when he saw me crossing the street. My impression has always been that people hate having their time wasted.
Traveling in Germany where there is a culture of biking and walking I found that jaywalking is never the less very much frowned upon by regular people and they see it as a transgression of norms.
I love hearing about this magical world where police harass random people for no reason. My experience in the city is police looking the other way when they shouldn't be. Everything from someone camping out in the middle of the sidewalk, illegal drug use in public, public urination and hopping turnstiles, just to list a few.
As a culture, we're pro jaywalking, which is fine, it should be legalized. You bare the risk entirely yourself if you choose to jaywalk. But let's not pretend like there is some overly strict police force that loves cracking skulls on any and every matter.
There's also waiting 1-2 minutes for green light on a pedestrian semaphore while the street is entirely empty of cars. If no cops are in sight I definitely cross the street. Usually one or two people get encouraged and also cross but there's always the sticklers who would wait the end of the world if not given the green light.
"Second, as a veteran jaywalker, my rule of thumb is that if a car has to hit their breaks even a little, or otherwise alter their trajectory, you're doing it wrong."
You're doing it illegally in most places. If you imped the flow of traffic with the right of way, that's still an offense in most places. The article isn't clear if it's still a violation in NYC, but I bet it is.
I believe that was their point in calling themselves a veteran jaywalker. If it were a proper legal way of crossing given local laws, it is not jaywalking.
> First, let's not forget that jaywalking is one of those "crimes" that is used as a pretense by police to harass people, usually young people and people of color.
But let's also not pretend that decriminalizing jaywalking ends this harassment. In 2023, California decriminalized jaywalking when it's not dangerous to cross. But police have still used jaywalking as a pretense for stopping (and assaulting) people. https://missionlocal.org/2024/09/sf-violent-jaywalking-incid...
Let's not forget that jaywalking was essentially created by the automotive industry and its lobbyists, to make life more convenient for drivers. It started in car-heavy places like California, and eventually became a law virtually everywhere in the US, but was never really enforced in New York City, where most people walk or take public transit, rather than drive. If, like most New Yorkers, you walk several kilometers a day, through dozens of intersections, it's ludicrous to suggest that you should only walk at crosswalks, and only when the walk sign is lit. New Yorkers don't have a concept of "jaywalking"; it's just "walking."
>New Yorkers don't have a concept of "jaywalking"; it's just "walking."
It's also not a word in the German language at all, it's just "crossing the road". If you do it safely grate, if you don't not grate and if there are children nearby unsafe road crossing is really something you shouldn't do, especially it it's just because you are to lazy to walk a small bit more (I think crossing a road close by a pedestrian crossing while you aren't allowed to cross it is also the only way it is illegal outside of the case of "you action counting as endangering you or others" (like actually endangering not some absurd twisting of definitions)).
In Vienna, which has very good public transport and a large walking population, there is a strong culture against jaywalking. Locals will wait at the crosswalk sign even on minor roads with no traffic. Having lived in New York, London, and other places, I've never seen anything like it.
>New Yorkers don't have a concept of "jaywalking"; it's just "walking."
As a general rule, I watch the cars and not the traffic lights. Mostly because many motorists (and NYC buses are the worst!) often don't pay attention to pedestrians, intersections or traffic lights. In fact, I'm more careful when walking through an intersection than in the middle of the street.
New York is probably the only place in the US where most of the drivers did not learn to drive here.
It's the most international city in the US, and a disproportionate number of people who use the roads (taxis, delivery drivers, etc) grew up in places that have a traffic system very different that the US's. People in New York routinely run red lights, roll through crosswalks, ride in the shoulder - things that you might encounter in other countries, but are generally considered disrespectful/dangerous in the US. When so many drivers grew up driving in places that tolerate those behaviors (either in their home countries or as native New Yorkers), it creates a road culture that's very different than you'd expect in other parts of America.
In other cities, you can take a "trust but verify" approach to traffic. Drivers will respect traffic lights. Pedestrians will cross where they're meant to. People will (only) use the lanes painted on the road. You have to be alert in case an outlier does something differently, but we generally consider those people selfish exceptions.
The written rules and the practiced culture deviate immensely in New York. You can't just operate by the rules and expect that everyone else will too.
And yet jaywalking accounts for the majority of pedestrian deaths, despite being a fraction of the number of crossings.
Believe it or not, most drivers do look out for pedestrians. Some better than others, but another set of eyeballs is invaluable, especially from the actual car that risks hitting you. Unfortunately, drivers do not expect people to cross in the middle of the street. And they never will, generally speaking. People are constantly milling around on the sidewalk, standing on curbs, doing all manner of crazy things, but not actually crossing. From a driver's perspective, a pedestrian about to cross the street typically looks indistinguishable from a pedestrian just doing the normal insane stuff pedestrians do. Then in a split second they go from normal pedestrian to crossing pedestrian, which is often much too late for a driver to respond, assuming they even noticed, unless it's at an expected crossing.
Yes, intersections feel dangerous and risky. But that's precisely why they're safer--pedestrians and drivers alike feel the anxiety, whereas when jaywalking both the pedestrian and car often don't sense any risk at all.
These deaths largely occur on high-speed roadways where people shouldn't be walking, or where the speed should be lower. The issue in both cases is a lack of public transit density. If you're in a dense area with a ton of pedestrians, the speed should be low enough that you CAN react, and there should be transit options that lower the number of car trips. In less dense areas, where automobile speeds are higher, auto and pedestrian traffic should be segregated; again, there should be other transit options that keep pedestrians away from spaces ripe for collisions.
Essentially, build more rail/bus lanes/bike lanes and lower traffic speed. The problem isn't jaywalking and it never was.
I live in SF. We just had an accident the other day that indisputably can be pinned on jaywalking--late at night, cross where there was an actual fence, and the car hadn't been speeding. In fact, the limit is 25 there. Jaywalking figures prominently in pedestrian deaths in this city, and it's not simply because of speeding as there simply aren't that many streets where you can go that fast, and in fact in some of the worst areas (e.g. Tenderloin) you'll find the slowest speeds. Pedestrian deaths are also often elderly, as younger victims would have been more likely to survive at the speeds they were hit.
Another major issue in this city, though, is visibility, what with all the tightly packed parallel parking, and streets (especially in the western half) just the perfectly wrong width for modern car A pillars. I would fully support shutting down dozens of streets that criss-cross the city to through traffic and dedicate them to biking and pedestrians. The bike lanes here (where people end up dying, regardless) piss me off to no end as much of time the city could have just given an entire street over to bikes a block away, rather than some of the most trafficked (by cars) thoroughfares, and everybody would be better off.
But another odd thing about SF is that pedestrians simply don't look. In every other major city I've lived or visited, in the US and around the world, the vast majority of pedestrians look before crossing a street. I've lived in SF for nearly 20 years and I can't get over how people just cross the streets--wide streets, busy streets, blind corners, etc--without a care in the world. It doesn't make it any less tragic, but... it's just so fscking bizarre. And I don't mean to excuse their deaths. Cars should be more careful, and they're definitely not--I'm wary of letting my children cross streets alone here, and I get honked regularly for not gunning it the moment a pedestrian crosses the center line when crossing. At the same time I find it very difficult to get too worked up when people blithely step in front of dump trucks (accident two weeks ago where even the city said there was absolutely nothing the city could have done to improve that intersection--the person just walked in front of the truck against every precaution).
On street parking really is the worse as a pedestrian. Yes, you can technically cross at any intersection in Seattle, but cars are parked so close that they won't see you unless you poke your head out. A lot of pedestrian problems could be solved by getting rid of or severely restricting on street parking.
Also, drugs are a huge issue. We have a lot of pedestrian/car accidents, something like 70% of them involves controlled substance abuse from either the driver or pedestrian (and much of the time, its the pedestrian). Fent really is a big problem.
> I would fully support shutting down dozens of streets that cross-cross the city to through traffic and dedicate them to biking and pedestrians.
I dream of this version of SF...
Given the size of the city, and amount of pedestrians and general walkability, I'm always amazed at how hard it is to get a pedestrian street here and there.... Even the peninsula is starting to get them in a way we seem to not be able to.
if you have businesses and residences fronting onto opposite sides of a high speed road and the nearest legal crossing is a half mile away, that's not realistic. almost nobody will decide "hey let me add a whole mile of walking to my journey and a few minutes at a signal to cross safely."
Its just an assumption that all people on the roads are having 100% focus on whole surrounding situation, 100% of the time. If you drive a bit as the only parent in the car with 2+ small kids, you know that ain't true, and yes complex intersections are one of the worst places.
Plus you have literal a-holes who ignore traffic rules on purpose, which in place where I live (Switzerland) is maybe 80% of the cyclists. I've had few near miss (5cm max) as a pedestrian where cyclist with red light zoomed through thick crowd crossing without even slowing down. Bear in mind that >=30kmh hit of pedestrian can easily end up in fatality or permanent disability, when wife worked on urgency in biggest hospital around here, there were some dead pedestrians from such collisions.
Since they made this change in California last year, I cross where ever when it is safe and convenient. I'm surprised how big of difference it made to the convenience and speed of walking somewhere. No more waiting for 2 different lights just to get to the opposite corner.
I had to look this up. "Safe jaywalking" is legal in California, but if you risk a collision, you can be cited.
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VC 21955. (a) Between adjacent intersections controlled by traffic control signal devices or by police officers, pedestrians shall not cross the roadway at any place except in a crosswalk.
(b)
(1) A peace officer, as defined in Chapter 4.5 (commencing with Section 830) of Title 3 of Part 2 of the Penal Code, shall not stop a pedestrian for a violation of subdivision (a) unless a reasonably careful person would realize there is an immediate danger of a collision with a moving vehicle or other device moving exclusively by human power.
(2) This subdivision does not relieve a pedestrian from the duty of using due care for their safety.
(3) This subdivision does not relieve a driver of a vehicle from the duty of exercising due care for the safety of any pedestrian within the roadway.
But -- in California -- it remains illegal to do so in sections of roadway that are betwixt two traffic lights, no matter how safe an convenient it is.
(We've got very similarly-worded restrictions here in Ohio, too, FWIW.)
> Between adjacent intersections controlled by traffic control signal devices
Does this mean diagonally? What's the distance to "adjacent"? One city block? Two? Does this mean that jaywalking is still practically illegal in most dense cities/downtown areas?
The lack of clarity is pretty frustrating with many of these laws. I understand the practical need for wiggle room, but this almost seems like a trap!
My naive interpretation is that police will still have plenty of opportunity to use jaywalking in the ways that the law was trying to prevent, especially in densely populated areas.
I used to live on a street where crossing it legally meant a one mile trek, so it's appreciated, especially since I was warned once, but I now have no idea if it would be legal or not, since there was a light half mile in either direction.
> An “intersection” is the area embraced within the prolongation of the lateral curb lines, or, if none, then the lateral boundary lines of the roadways, of two highways which join one another at approximately right angles or the area within which vehicles traveling upon different highways joining at any other angle may come in conflict.
My question was specifically about the "adjacent" part of "adjacent intersections". That link explains "intersections". What does it mean when those are "adjacent"?
Aye. I can't find that part spelled out anywhere for CA. (There's probably case law on the topic, but IANAL.)
My lay interpretation is, I think, the same as yours: In order to avoid doing illegal things, one would have to walk a mile to cross the road in your example.
And as a lay jaywalker: I'm absolutely certain that I would never do that; I'd simply cross the road when when it was safe to do so. (I'd also like to hope that I would have the time, money, and opportunity to have a turn in front of a judge for any resulting citation because this kind of result is absolute horseshit.)
As a veteran jaywalker, let me propose that you avoid crossing at junctions, where crossings are usually located, ideally cross at one leg, especially good if it’s a one way street.
Less traffic, fewer inputs/outputs to keep under observations.
Where I live, just about all of the downtown streets are one-ways and it does wonders for getting around both on foot and in an automobile. Though the latter will be more punishing if you don't know the lay of the land, and there will be congestion near on-ramps during rush hour.
>waiting for 2 different lights just to get to the opposite corner.
A solution sometimes seen in London is a “Pedestrian Scramble”, where pedestrians are explicitly given full (and even diagonal) access to a junction with all other traffic stopped.
In Seattle, they call these "all walks" or officially, "all way walks." I love them, since I don't feel like I have to watch out for drivers making left turns.
The dichotomy is pretty interesting to me, given that most major cities in the country have been running high-publicity programs for the last decade to do everything possible to reduce car-related deaths, especially protecting pedestrians and bicyclists. (Cities like NYC and Seattle call it "vision zero", a vision of zero serious traffic injuries/deaths). They work to separate pedestrians and bicyclists from traffic, slow cars down with "traffic calming measures", lower speed limits, and so on.
Those stated goals seem, to me, to clash with the idea of now making it up to people's discretion to cross roads wherever and whenever they want, rather than at dedicated, marked, predictable, traffic crossings equipped with signal lights that tell cars and pedestrians who has the right of way.
I'm curious in X years if the data will or will not show more pedestrians got hit by cars following this change.
Partially it's because this is a false dichotomy. The most efficient and safe system isn't something that erects permanent barriers between pedestrians and cars – because a system like this creates ugly cities and undesirable walking, cycling, and driving conditions – it's something that allows them to coexist safely, generally by making them slower, more visible, and more predictable.
I walk/run, drive, and cycle in NYC. In my view, the way NYC works in most intersections and roads is pretty close to maximally efficient. And it generally gets better over time, although it has occasionally gotten worse in the name of safety.
The things that make it that way include (1) mostly one-way roads, which makes jaywalking significantly easier and safer (2) mostly single-lane or dual-lane roads (3) well-tuned traffic lights with relatively brief cycles (4) relatively low speed limits that are brutally enforced with speed traps (5) an abundance of red light cameras.
The least safe parts of the city are those with more than 2 lanes of traffic, especially if it's bi-directional, and those with really poorly designed cycling infrastructure. My pet peeve roads are the ones that look like this:
| sidewalk | cycle lane | parking spots | road |
e.g. Grand St in Williamsburg, because this design makes jay-walking extremely dangerous. and it makes cyclists go faster than they otherwise-would, because of the (occasionally-enough-to-be-dangerous false) sense of being insulated from both pedestrians and cars.
The other major source of risks, again IME, are cyclists going counter-traffic on one-way roads, and people on electric-assisted bikes in general traveling >20mph.
I was in Morocco this summer, and for the most part, there is no separation between where motorbikes can ride and pedestrians can walk. It's totally intermixed.
At first I was concerned, but then I realized it's actually a lot safe. The motorbikes were cautious because there could be a pedestrian at any turn. And the pedestrians were cautious because there could be a motorbike at any moment.
Didn't see a single accident or even any near misses.
There is a question of critical mass that you see in cities that are built around the concept of pedestrians first. Cars go slower, give right of way to pedestrians and generally don't drive as aggressively as we see in most North American cities.
In Europe you see plenty of places that are pedestrian first and the car drivers are expected to act differently as a result. Something similar happens in Amsterdam where it is a cyclist first city. Cyclists expect right of way and cars are few and far between.
So long as you go about thinking of this in terms of car first as a de facto part of life you won't understand how good it could be with less cars.
Could be. Or maybe drivers will get used to people popping up everywhere and will therefore drive with more concentration. I'm not sure, like you say, it will be interesting to see the data.
It's more of an acceptance of reality. Pedestrians in NYC cross however they want and police only ever intervene if they're doing something excessively dangerous (which I believe is still illegal) or if they're looking for a excuse to harass someone. It's the latter they are trying to eliminate. This will likely have no impact on road safety and slightly reduce the number of people getting hassled by police.
There's also the balance of power that NYC is actually mostly pedestrian. Anything that empowers pedestrians and inhibits cars is a net win for freedom of movement.
I remember visiting California in the 1990s and was amazed to see my California friends waiting patiently at the light, looking at me like I was uncivilized because I just crossed the street whenever it was safe.
Current day Sweden: People cross tend to cross the street whenever it feels safe, unless there's some mom/dad with young kids in tow nearby. Then it's polite to wait for the light to turn green. We often have very little traffic on our streets though, and they are often not very wide.
It's technically illegal to jaywalk but not punishable unless you manage to cause a traffic accident, somehow. I like these pragmatic laws.
In the United States, having laws like that results in discriminatory policing (see many threads here). Probably less than an issue in a country that doesn't have such issues with race.
Surprisingly the word jaywalking comes from jay-driving which was coined to describe drivers driving on the wrong side of the road. Initially the term jaywalking really only applied to poor etiquette when walking on the sidewalk.
It's hard to tell from the article - is it still a violation if you don't yield to traffic with the right of way? If so, that's how jaywalking works in the vast majority of places. If you cross and imped the flow of traffic with the right of way, you are jaywalking and will be ticketed for it. This is just standard in most places.
I will still be using the cross walks everywhere I go. Because there's no shortcut across the street that is worth me stopping traffic or getting hit by a car.
Jaywalking is for selfish and impatient people who are bad at assessing risk.
As someone who has never lived in a city this is strange to me. I live in a relatively dense part of Louisiana, but around here you couldn't walk at all without jaywalking. There aren't even sidewalks in a lot of places. You just walk along the side of the road.
Well if the government doesn't provide infrastructure for you to use, then you have no choice but to jaywalk.
What I think is crazy is all of the cities that just don't build sidewalks. I understand in certain rural areas, but yeah, many midwestern and southern cities are downright hostile to pedestrians.
Good riddance. Crosswalks at intersections are nearly obsolete due to the thick A-pillars in modern cars. I would rather have mid-block crosswalks with warning lights and traffic calming devices.
A-pillars are the pillars of a car that support the windshield and the front of the roof. They've gotten bigger in recent years - which reduces the visibility of pedestrians, cyclists, and other cars. Drivers can't see through pillars. Big pillars are safer for the driver in case of a collision or a rollover, but paradoxically also makes that car more dangerous for everyone else on the road. I don't think they make crosswalks obsolete, but crossing the road is more dangerous today than it was 50 years ago.
Your citation blames the size of vehicles for the increase in danger, not A pillars specifically. And the demonstration was how many children could be sitting in front of a pickup truck before the driver could see them.
> “They are larger, heavier and higher up from the road than smaller cars and create blind spots that make it challenging for drivers to see vulnerable road users like pedestrians and cyclists,”
I drive a car with enormous A pillars (coupe version of a convertible) and never have issues seeing the children playing in the street because of it. Likely because most 8 year olds would be at eye level with me.
A modern F150 however, an entire car could be obscured by the long, high hood of those.
> But cross walks have nothing to do with that really?
The posted article mentioned accidents specifically at cross walks.
> The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that drivers of SUVs, pickups, vans, and minivans are “substantially more likely” than car drivers to hit pedestrians when making turns,
The reasoning though is mainly speculation. I've found that minivans offer exceptional visibility. So it could be as simple as people who buy SUVs, minivans, and pickups are just worse drivers than those in coupes and sedans.
My theory is that people just don't consider pedestrians when making left turns at intersections with cross walks. Instead, they focus on oncoming traffic and commit to a turn before looking at where they are going.
is there a difference, legally, regarding vehicular involuntary manslaughter, between hitting someone who is jaywalking and someone who is not. Example, a person walks into a 65 mph thoroughfare after a curve, since they are no longer in the commencement of a crime, does that make the act tantamount to hitting someone in a crosswalk?
As far as I know, NYC is unique in that pedestrians do not have the right of way. Everywhere else you must legally stop for a pedestrian but in NYC you don't. (edit, since people seem confused: This doesn't mean you can run them over. It just means you don't have to stop if you are going to block their path. Everywhere else, you have to stop if you are going to block a pedestrian's path, no matter where that pedestrian is.)
They have to do this or people would just block all traffic all the time.
So this really is just to stop racial profiling. It's really not going to change much in the day to day goings on in NYC.
The Last Clear Chance Doctrine (in tort law, not criminal law), which is pretty widely accepted, is that regardless of right of way, if you are able to avoid an accident, then you must.
Having the right of way matters less than the ability to avoid an accident. If you plow into a pedestrian that you saw from three blocks away, you will absolutely be considered liable civilly since you had a clear chance to avoid a collision.
The general rule in almost every vehicle code is that having the right of way does not relieve you of the obligation to do everything reasonable to avoid collisions and injuries.
That’s not what that means. It means you’re allowed to block their path. Everywhere else you must stop if you will block the path of a person. In NYC you do not.
You can cross wherever and whenever is safe to do so. If traffic conditions don’t facilitate this, pedestrian crossings provide guaranteed crossing points where pedestrians have right of way.
Basically it means that pedestrians are allowed to cross the road anywhere, anytime, but they still have to yield to car traffic except at pedestrian crossings without a semaphore or at the Walk signal. It's a very common-sense law.
> they still have to yield to car traffic except at pedestrian crossings without a semaphore or at the Walk signal.
This isn't true. Car traffic must yield to pedestrians. Pedestrians don't always have the right of way, but you (hopefully obviously) can't just arbitrarily mow them down.
The only time this would matter is if you hit someone and it went to court. Thus in practice, you have to yield to pedestrians whenever you can reasonably do so. It's actually written into NY law (section 1146: "Due Care").
No, this is a misunderstanding of what right of way means. Drivers are never allowed to intentionally cause accidents, either with other cars or with pedestrians. If you have right of way in an intersection but a car is nevertheless not yielding to you, you are not allowed to plow into them if you can reasonably avoid it. That doesn't mean that you don't actually have right of way, or that you need to stop at every intersection to make sure that someone is not yielding.
The same is true with pedestrians crossing where they have to yield to cars. It's their responsibility to check that no cars are passing before crossing. At a crosswalk, drivers will slow down if they see a pedestrian heading towards the crossing; they don't need to (and won't) at other places. Of course, if they see a pedestrian in the middle of the road, they are not allowed to hit them, just like they're not allowed to hit a car.
You can go to jail if you don't take due care to avoid hitting a pedestrian, or even an animal. The right of way of the person being hit is irrelevant. But sure, if you, pedestrian, cause an accident due to your failure to respect right of way, you have also violated a traffic law, and you could be punished for it.
In practice, in a place like NYC, you're going to have to go to pretty extreme lengths for this to apply. Maybe if you dart into traffic maliciously, and a car swerves to avoid you and hits something? I dunno. It's hard to imagine a scenario.
From the article ”It also allows for crossing against traffic signals and specifically states that doing so is no longer a violation of the city’s administrative code.”
Did you read the article? Pedestrians can always cross but they then don't have the right of way and have to yield to traffic. Basically everyone can keep doing what they've been doing all along but police can no longer arrest them for it through selective enforcement.
>Did you read the article? Pedestrians can always cross but they then don't have the right of way and have to yield to traffic. Basically everyone can keep doing what they've been doing all along but police can no longer arrest them for it through selective enforcement.
As a lifelong New Yorker, I can tell you that arrest is never an option for any violation of the city's administrative code. Rather it's a fine.
And as you alluded to, black and brown people were the vast majority of those fined under the jaywalking regulation.
As a cis white guy, I didn't even know that jaywalking was 'illegal' in NYC until folks started talking about 'legalizing' it a few years ago.
As I mentioned, I've lived here pretty much all my life and have 'jaywalked' in front of police hundreds if not thousands of times and none have ever even looked at me funny.
So yes, this is a very good thing. Just one very, very small step on the road to 'a more perfect union', IMHO.
Not growing up in america I never understood what jaywalking was - I legit assumed it was a pedestrian crossing a freeway because nothing else made sense. Growing up I was taught explicitly to do what in the US was a crime: crossing between intersections because it is vastly safer than crossing at intersections.
Obviously, there's a more complex issue with jaywalking where it is a crime that is trivially easy to enforce in a discriminatory manner, and it creates endless opportunities for pretextual searches once NY's clearly unconstitutional stop-and-frisk laws were overturned.
Jaywalking is any crossing in a wrong / illegal way, not about intersections specifically. Mostly it's about not using crosswalks, so I don't see how it collides with what Europe does.
In Europe you also have differences with some countries where crosswalk lights are as a mandate from God and nobody will cross even at 2am deserted road. And then you have countries where the crosswalk lights are mere decorations.
Something like that happened to me on my first day as an adult in Germany. Wide road, Sunday afternoon, visibility over 1km in both directions, not a car in sight. I was accompanied by a girl from the place where I was to work. I had just met her and she was showing me to the nearby convenience store.
She suddenly started screaming when I crossed the street while the pedestrian light was red. I didn't get what the problem was so I crossed back, to much drama.
She (or her boyfriend) later told me there was a long-running campaign during the 90s aiming to curb pedestrian death, that featured vivid TV spots showing kids die because they routinely saw adults jaywalking and imitated them.
So jaywalking = killing children.
Also German children of all ages are encouraged to say to jaywalkers "You're not a good example for the children.". It happened to me more than once.
This is also very much the agitprop in Russia, although in practice people mostly just ignore it. Sometimes in very frustrating ways, too, like crossing the road on red in front of an ambulance with the emergency light on.
When there might plausibly be little kids watching, I make sure I'm very obvious about checking for oncoming traffic. Repeatedly. Before & during crossing the road.
Where onlooking kiddies seem implausible, I pretty much do the same thing. Far better to be an obvious chicken than dead right.
> In Europe you also have differences with some countries where crosswalk lights are as a mandate from God and nobody will cross even at 2am deserted road
I think that's mostly just certain parts of Germany.
Also in the UK we have pedestrian refuge islands. Not a crossing, as there is no pedestrian priority, but useful little bits of road furniture that reduces the likelihood of getting mown down by cars. As a side effect they also tend to slow down car traffic due to narrowing of the road. Americans may see them as official jaywalking points.
Not entirely true. Generally true in England & Wales and Scotland aside from motorways, but in Northern Ireland the cops can fine you for it, although it rarely seems to be enforced.
Jaywalking is a pedestrian crossing outside of explicitly designated crossings points. In the US that means by *default( any pedestrian crossing any street at any location other than a pedestrian crossing or an intersection, regardless of distance to such a point.
There is a massive difference between "country culturally tends towards using designated crossing points" and "it's a criminal offense to not use them". I'm curious about which countries outside of the US, especially in Europe, that criminalize jaywalking.
If France, the law states that a pedestrians should use designated crossing points if one is available within 50 meters. Crossing at a red light is also illegal.
It is punishable with a 4€ fixed fine. I don't know of any lesser punishable crime and it is rarely enforced in practice despite jaywalking being common. But it is still a crime.
It's a spectrum. E.g. in Russia it's illegal to cross the road if there's a crosswalk or intersection visible from the point where you cross it (and cops will fine you for it - or rather, attempt to extort a bribe).
Which countries obey crossing lights as strictly as you describe? I've been to lots of European countries and none were like that. Not in the way that the US is.
Poland is pretty strict. They will fine you if you cross the street where there isnt a crosswalk. And generally people wait for green light in Poland even if there are zero cars on the road.
Parts of Germany, lots of Poland, Austria, etc. South Europe where I'm from is "decoration land", but the more east you go the harsher they are/were with enforcement so the more people abide.
In countries where open police corruption is more routine, cops love enforcing such laws because it's a very low-effort to extort bribes. Not even because the fine is significant, but because the procedure to pay it once given a ticket may be rather onerous compared to just handing over a banknote and going on your way.
Illegal in Russia. There is even a common trick during driving exam: examiner ask you to let a person cross in a middle of a road. You do that, and you've failed the exam.
I'm currently in Tokyo and it is the norm to wait for the green man, even if it is a two-lane road there isn't a car in sight. I can understand waiting at one of the mega intersections, where you can barely make out the pedestrians on the other side - definitely waiting for permission to cross there.
Also currently in Tokyo. While the norm, it's starting to change! I've definitely seen a lot of younger people willing to cross against a red when it's obviously safe.
In addition to the ones people already mentioned: In Copenhagen it was very rare for people to cross on red. I never got and dirty looks when I did it, but it was definitely not the norm.
In Poland I always respect the pedestrian lights. Contrary to France and even Germany, drivers expect you to respect them, and especially in Warsaw there is a very high tolerance on speeding on big wide arters. Cars crossing intersections at speeds of more than 90km/h (7.8 furlongs per minute for Americans) are usual in Warsaw.
Other comments have pointed out that intersections are difficult to cross safely because cars are coming from multiple directions, often in non-obvious ways.
Between the intersections you only have two directions to worry about.
Yes, but at intersections drivers are forced to slow down and look for traffic and maybe prepare to make a turn, so you can expect them to move slower and have more situational awareness.
You should be right! But you are misidentifying the problem.
The problem here is not the norm, it's the exceptions. Some drivers don't slow down or pay attention. Those are the ones that cause all the risk. While normal drivers behave better at intersections, a pedestrian can't trust that every driver will do that.
In a mid block crossing, you don't have to rely on drivers behaving a certain way, so the predictability is increased and the overall result is safer.
I witnessed a driver make an aggressive left turn as soon as a light turned green, to beat the first car going the other way.
Unfortunately that aggressive left turn ended abruptly when they hit a pedestrian crossing the street on that same green light. Thankfully the pedestrian seemed mostly shaken up, but I have to imagine there were long-term consequences of that.
> crossing between intersections because it is vastly safer than crossing at intersections
It's true in most city streets because even if cars drive faster outside of intersections, if we walk fast and have good visibility then it's not an issue.
There are very busy roundabouts with crosswalks right next to them.
As a driver having to stop means being scared for your car's behind.
The speed of vehicles is not super relevant in the context of the intrinsic safety for a pedestrian crossing the road. Assuming reasonable amounts of visibility.
The safest way for a pedestrian to cross a road is a location where there is the greatest opportunity to avoid a collision at any speed. That means minimizing number of directions you need to watch for traffic, and maximizing the likelihood of being in the line of sight of drivers. That means you want to cross away from intersections.
Crossing between intersections means that as a pedestrian you only have to be concerned about traffic from two (or even just one) directions, and for oncoming traffic you will definitionally be in the direction the drivers are facing.
Crossing at intersections means as a pedestrian you are having to watch for traffic from more directions, including directly behind you, and traffic approaching the intersection has drivers who are necessarily going to be having to look at places other than directly in front of them in the case of traffic coming towards you on the street you are crossing, and traffic coming from the other streets may not by physically able to see you on the intersecting cross street (from their PoV) prior to actually reaching the intersection.
Hence crossing between intersections is safer because it reduces the likelihood of any collision, as it's easier for everyone involved to be aware of everyone else.
Speed of a pedestrian vs vehicle collision is much less of a safety factor than just not having the collision at all, because the difference in speed between "walk away" and "going to hospital" is very small - well within normal intersection speeds. At higher speeds of course the likelihood of going to the morgue skyrockets, but when considering the safety of "low speed" collisions it's important to consider a "low speed" collision that is minor for an adult is still easily able to kill a child, and the speed _required_ to kill is not that high as demonstrated by multiple pedestrian vs cyclist collisions that have killed people (I think generally older people or just really bad luck but its just important to recognize that the "serious damage to soft and squishy people" is way lower than people think).
In the UK we have various types of pedestrian crossing, but they're an optional convenience. You can use them, or you can find a safe place and time to cross yourself.
I guess the jaywalking law is partly to avoid disrupting traffic, but the most efficient cross is the one when no traffic is present, and that's more likely in the middle of the road than at an intersection.
In the UK, not at every intersection, by any means. In fact, it's probably a minority in many places. We're taught how to cross in the middle of the road.
Of course, the question is "is it a crime to cross a road outside of those designated points" in america the answer is often "yes".
Which means the only legal place to cross a road is an intersection, which is significantly less safe for pedestrians.
Next time you're going for a walk, try to estimate what % of intersections or crossing points are protected (stop signs for all roads, traffic lights, or barriers). Similarly, when you're out driving try and see how much you slow down for each intersection (ie non-jaywalking crossing points) - this is not a judgement on driving style this is just about working out relative safety. Any unprotected intersection you go through without significantly slowing down (think dropping to parking lot speed) for is a location where crossing away from the intersection is safer.
Safety for pedestrians crossing a road is primarily from collision avoidance - as I said in another comment the amount of damage from a pedestrian vs vehicle collision high at even "low" car speeds.
In most places, jaywalking typically means crossing outside of a crosswalk while being within a short distance of a crosswalk. It's more dangerous for pedestrians near crosswalks, cars are turning and have limited visibility, so using the crosswalk (when crossing is allowed, if there's a crossing indicator) is the rule.
If you are a certain distance away from a crosswalk, you are allowed to cross the road but must yield to oncoming cars.
It's really pretty simple and common-sense. Of course there are differences in local rules, but this is the way it usually works.
I think "no jaywalking because safety" would make more sense if crosswalks were totally safe. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in NY, can't traffic move over crosswalks even against traffic lights, in some circumstances? I always find that confusing-and frightening!
In certain parts of the USA, cars are allowed to turn right from the first lane even on a red light, unless there is some explicit sign prohibiting it in that intersection.
Yes, and in that case the car has to yield to the pedestrian, if the pedestrian has the right of way. It's really very simple, and in every basic driving test.
The problem is the driver is likely looking to the left to see if it's safe to quickly pull out and not bother looking to their right for that pedestrian stepping out into the intersection.
I've been lightly hit a few times because of people like that.
I've also almost been hit by people ignoring the stop line and stopping abruptly in the crosswalk area immediately in front of me.
The laws are clear about this. If the crosswalk has a crossing indicator, allowing people to cross, then the people have the right of way. It doesn't matter what the person in the car is wanting to do, they must yield to pedestrians. If they hit a pedestrian, then it's clearly the driver's fault. If a pedestrian crosses outside of a crosswalk (a distance away from a crosswalk), they are supposed to yield to oncoming cars. If they don't and the pedestrian gets hit by a car, it's the pedestrian's fault. Got it?
Unless I'm missing something: Defining traffic laws is something that the states do on their own, and these aren't things that the federal government generally gets involved with.
Thus, there are 50 different sets of these laws, plus DC. Any similarities between them may be nothing more than incidental.
I grew up in Southern California. My parents strictly observed traffic laws, and riding in the car with them, I would often hear their disapproving gossip about pedestrians' faux pas, including wearing black at night.
In high school, a classmate tried to help me loosen up a bit, and he'd encourage our group to cross a busy stroad. "They'll stop! They'll stop for you!" he assured me. He was right...
I visited Catalonia awhile ago. My companion was a native there and helped me understand local customs. I was able to drive her car a little bit, LHD, although the roundabouts tended to bewilder me. On foot, we'd approach a busy street and she encouraged me to just cross. She showed me how to hold out a hand as a signal of my intent. Motorists would slow and yield. She was also right.
I heard that the walk signal buttons are called "beg buttons", as in "pedestrians beg to enter the street". I use them scrupulously. My justification is that a theoretical personal injury lawsuit is easier to litigate, if I can prove I was doing everything right.
Does anyone know if beg button presses get tracked? I often wonder if pressing it increases some great counter in the sky that future city planners can use to design an intersection better.
> My justification is that a theoretical personal injury lawsuit is easier to litigate, if I can prove I was doing everything right.
I guess the way I see it is if you want your grave stone to read "Here lies AStonesThrow. He had the right of way!" then by all means, step out into traffic--they'll always stop for you.
Sounds like survivorship bias to me. A substantial fraction of drivers are generally not looking forward or paying attention at any given time... you're just rolling the dice by assuming they will see you and stop.
I find it comical that it's usually liberal leaning folks that want to use early 1900s interpretation of the law for why it's bogus. Yet they want "regulation" for so many contemporary issues. A true liberal would adapt and move with the times: vehicles are the primary way people move in most parts of the country. The average speed AND acceleration of cars (and the people driving them) is MUCH higher than the days of the Model-T. "Regulating" the coexistence of vehicles and living meat bags seems like common sense, and saying "cars weren't here 120 years ago" is irrelevant.
Granted you've misinterpreted the posters point - but I will respond to your perception of his point (which I agree with).
You could easily imagine a world where pedestrians have the right of way on the streets, and cars "request access to the road" in a similar way that pedestrians do. Actually, if this is not easy for you to imagine - it suggests enormous internal bias.
However, pedestrians can cross wherever/whenever they think that it's safe to do so anywhere in Britain (Northern Ireland I think has some kind of jaywalking law). It's not just in London or other cities, but remote countrysides too where crossings may not be available. Pedestrians have priority, but it's definitely frowned upon to cause vehicles to have to slow/swerve to avoid a collision.
The Highway Code was recently updated (a few years ago) to make it more explicit that pedestrians crossing a side road junction should have priority over vehicles trying to turn into the side road. However, that's not necessarily followed by all drivers/cyclists etc.
Basically, drivers/cyclists are expected to make all efforts to avoid a collision and will be considered at fault unless it's a scenario where the pedestrian steps into the road without enough time for the driver/cyclist to react and avoid them.
I don't think that's not very comparable. You don't get that many high rise residential buildings in central London, but it gets all the workers anyway. It's not as extreme, but think of Shibuya crossing having 0 population. We'd need some measure of people on the streets instead.
So on that basis, jaywalking should be prohibited on Manhattan Island, because it's population density is greater than that of London, which we have for some reason decided is the arbiter, but allowed virtually everywhere else in the US, where the population density is less than London?
If you allow pedestrians to cross anywhere at any time with right of way, that can work to a certain density. On the other end of the scale, traffic will be at a standstill due to a constant stream of pedestrians. I don't know exactly where on that scale either of those cities is, but the argument that it works in the UK where the density is 5x less seems flawed.
I've posted in the sibling thread r.e. the density (which I believe you have underestimated by several orders of magnitude), however a stroll around london will show you that, excepting arterial roads, cars always have to deal with pedestrians crossing at any time and place, including between you and the car ahead if you come to a stop, or if there's more than a couple meters between you and the next car. Even busy arterial roads will have to deal with people walking across them if there are large gaps or the traffic is slow or stalled.
I'm struggling to believe London Brigde area and the square mile get 5x less congested than New York. What areas of London and New York are we comparing?
It would kill the utility of cars though, you could never drive faster than maybe 30 miles per hour or you would constantly run people over.
Pedestrians are more nimble than cars, so it kind of makes sense that cars have the right of way. As far as I know, large container ships have right of way over small vessels for the same reason.
This speed limit, or lower, is pretty common in major European cities. Helps divert investment to things more beneficial to society than individual car ownership, improves transit, cleans up cities, makes for great public spaces.
Yes, I was saying that 30 miles would have to be the limit on every street though, in cities you would probably have to do 10 if everyone could step onto the street at every moment.
But just because jaywalking isn’t a crime doesn’t mean pedestrians have right of way. Is that the case anywhere? I thought that was the proposal, which is much different than allowing people to cross everywhere, after looking out that there’s no car coming.
reedf1 wrote:
> You could easily imagine a world where pedestrians have the right of way on the streets, and cars "request access to the road" in a similar way that pedestrians do.
Pedestrians have quite broad right of way in the UK - you can't step into moving traffic and expect them to slam on the brakes, but you will see people crossing anywhere and everywhere at any time:
Using the right tools at the right place is part of it: cars are useful for some trips, less for others. Trying to solve every transportation problem with a unique solution was IMHO the original sin of this.
> Pedestrians are more nimble
Think kids going to school and elderlies. Having something that work for them requires either putting the burden on cars or removing cars from the picture. One costs a lot more than the other, and in the case you want to keep cars in cities the former is probably more attractive than the latter.
> you could never drive faster than maybe 30 miles per hour or you would constantly run people over.
Wait, when are you driving faster than that in a city anyway? City roads here are mostly restricted to 30kph; travel times didn't significantly increase when this was imposed a while back.
Have you ever driven through a downtown urban area? You can't go more than 30mph anyway, even if you wanted to. There is simply too much connections, turns, etc.
And yet, I still disagree that pedestrians should be able to just enter the road willy-nilly. Crosswalks are there for safety because it sets the same expectations for everyone using the road, drivers included, thus creating order and flow that is generally reliable.
This is also the same problem I have with cyclists that think they should be allowed to ride against traffic, ignore stop signs, etc. By not moving with the expected flow, they endanger themselves and creat problems. When I am making a right hand turn, for example, and a cyclist has decided to ride against traffic, I am not compelled to look to my right as I am timing my turn because I am not expecting traffic to be there since a right turn has you crossing zero lanes of traffic and merging with on-coning that would be on your left.
I don't really like our car-centric roads in the US at all, but rules are in place for a reason.
> I am not compelled to look to my right as I am timing my turn because I am not expecting traffic to be there since a right turn has you crossing zero lanes of traffic and merging with on-coning that would be on your left.
Except you may have just passed a cyclist without leaving enough time to turn because you barely registered their presence and are now going to cut them off. Or you stopped at an intersection and they approached on the right because that is where they are supposed to stay by law and you didn't check your blind spot before you started. The first situation can happen with cars where you pass a slow moving car just before an intersection and immediately slow down to turn right, merging back into the lane and cutting off the car. If you have driven any amount of time at all, I am sure you have seen that annoying scenario. The second situation doesn't typically happen with cars because of how right turn lanes are constructed but can (unlawfully) occur when someone (typically a tourist) was in the straight going lane but realized they wanted or needed to turn right.
Dedicated bicycle lanes are meant to make it clear that you are indeed crossing traffic when you turn right because bicycles as slow moving traffic are intended to stay in that area as an exceptional case.
I should clarify that when dedicated bike lanes are present, I absolutely look for cyclists in both directions. Again, setting expectations is important. It's also why we use turn signals.
My reference to cyclists goinh the wrong way takes place in the suburbs where I have lived most, and bikes are not exactly common. On a four lane highway with a speed limit of 55mph, multiple driveways, etc (Not Just Bikes calls them Stroads), a cyclist moving against traffic on a narrow shoulder is not expected. We can preach all day about "paying attention" but we have created a situation that demands high levels of attention from all, but cyclists feel they are exempt from the rules of traffic, making the situation worse in some immature act of defiance.
I like my bike. I ride it as often as possible and travel to places specifically because they have good biking infrastructure. But when I am in a place where therd is none, I ride with traffic, use my hand signals, and assume drivers cannot see me because they have a hundred other things they need to pay attention to, so I put effort into making myself visible and communicating intent.
> but cyclists feel they are exempt from the rules of traffic, making the situation worse in some immature act of defiance.
The vast majority of drivers are continuously violating laws. On top of the continuous speeding violation (+10-15 is surely ok?) add the occasional roll through, failures to yield, failure to use a turn signal, speeding in school zones, passing without sufficient distance, running reds, double parking, etc and the police pretty much always can pull over any given automobile driver. This fact is well known: the default state of a driver is one of rule breaking.
Primary attribution fallacy is the contextualization of our own errors or rule violations while attributing those of strangers to character flaws (immature, defiant). You pass drivers doing all of the above things every day, but it is the cyclists you notice because they are different and the other drivers are surely doing the same as you. But you understand the context in which you violate laws or make mistakes.
It is not that hard to understand that everyone is human.
> Except you may have just passed a cyclist without leaving enough time to turn because you barely registered their presence and are now going to cut them off.
> and you didn't check your blind spot before you started.
No amount of legislation or changes in rules will protect from people who aren't paying attention. These changes don't have an impact immediately, but the only way to make them is to do them at one point or another. The people learning to drive in NY now will know that things are different, and in 10-15 years the behaviour will change.
Because it's not 'asking' if it's a law. If you're legislating that people can't just walk across a deserted street where it's most convenient then you have a broken law. Legislate against disrupting traffic if you really need to. Not disrupting traffic? What's the problem?
If the street is empty then it's easy to recognize that. However what will the rule be if there is a car, but far away, or not that far away. It's a slippery slope with a 2 ton SUV driving at 50mph and a person "interpreting" that it's not disrupting it.
Ambiguity will be the problem and it is solved by the rule of "not crossing at all". The lesser of 2 evils.
> It's a slippery slope with a 2 ton SUV driving at 50mph and a person "interpreting" that it's not disrupting it.
Maybe the problem here is that a 2 ton SUV shouldn't be driven at 50mph when pedestrians are anywhere near. I always find it interesting how the ones advocating for the absolute freedom of owning and driving an SUV everywhere, to carry 70kg of human flesh, are usually also the ones asking for the restriction of the freedom of other users of the public space.
The problem is not how big is the car or any other subject.
The problem with any rule that is badly formulated is the ambiguity it creates. In this instance this bad definition can lead to very bad consequences.
Bad rules = ambiguous rules and need for interpretation and that leads to many bad consequences.
There is no ambiguity here, if you don't have the right of way you will be liable if something happens. But "something happening" will likely have to be more than just disrupting an SUV driver going at 50mph by making him slow down a bit.
I think jaywalking being technically illegal allows law enforcement to use an expedient to arrest people they want to arrest for other reasons, for example, there is no law that would allow to arrest you for "walking while black", but crossing the street at an unauthorized point? Yeah that works
Cars are already supposed to slow down if they see pedestrians on the street, even if the pedestrian is crossing illegally, same as they are supposed to avoid drivers doing illegal things. It's the police's job to punish illegal behavior, not drivers'.
So, in the situation you describe, the solution is clear: the car has to slow down, and any police officer is supposed to notice that the car had to slow down and issue some citation to the pedestrian for not respecting the right of way. This is exactly how all traffic violations work: if some car is not yielding to you, you don't drive into them, you break to avoid the accident, and hope that the police sees this and issues a citation to the other driver.
Rules for people are not the same as a code for a compiler. You may enact a rule, but people are not guaranteed they will comply with it either because they will brake it or they will forget/ignore it.
If a bad rule is enacted and it kills 100 people per year more, will enforcement of the rule bring back those 100 people?
Rules should take into account the stupid things people will do and that in real life you won't get 100% compliance and enforcement won't get you to 100%. (many real life examples)
Sure, the results have to be measured and the rules adjusted. But a possible result of this rule is exactly that it will make drivers drive more slowly in general, for fear of hitting pedestrians, which would overall reduce accidents, even outside of pedestrian deaths.
> will enforcement of the rule bring back those 100 people?
Yes. Enforcement of the rules, when done properly, does save lives. We have psychology studies that show that judgement/punishment needs to be swift/certain. When that is the case, human behavior is altered (sometimes permanently).
> and that in real life you won't get 100% compliance and enforcement
No one needs 100% compliance. We need something up near 98% or 99%, which is achievable.
Crosswalks are typically at intersections - this is NOT where pedestrians are most protected. Often, it's safer to cross in the middle of the road, particularly if it's one way.
When you're at an intersection, there's cars coming from many directions. In addition, from the crosswalks I've seen they don't even stop turning cars - the turning cars have to be looking and stop themselves.
The average person probably violates jaywalking laws multiple times a day. What other law do most people break constantly as just part of day to day life?
I imagine most Americans violate speeding and other vehicles moving laws far more often than jaywalking. I imagine the majority of Americans haven't actually crossed a street as a pedestrian in the last week.
Why would they? They drive from their home to their job to the parking lot of the grocery store to the drive through pickup line at school for their kids.
I'm one of the more transit/pedestrian/bike people in the group I routinely hang out with and I haven't actually crossed the street as a pedestrian in a few days.
Even if you always drive, parking in large cities is often limited enough that you have to walk a fair bit from where you can find a spot to where you actually need to go.
You might overly be estimating your ideas of what is "urban".
Tons of Americans never have to deal with crossing a street for their parking. They're not parking at some lot around the block and walking. It's all just a sea of pavement. City codes mandate each big box store has dozens of spots per shelf in the store. This on its face seems like a gross overstatement but looking at maps shows the truth of the seas of empty lots surrounding big box stores.
I live in an American town with <8k residents, so I know exactly what you mean.
But many large cities don't have such city codes and have very limited parking as a result, even around large stores etc; especially not in downtown. Which, even if you don't live or work there, is still somewhere people sometimes have to go to for other reasons, from visiting a fancy restaurant to jury summons.
Anti-miscegenation laws were a common place one for some time .. arguably some alive today are still a living crime.
Trevor Noah titled a book Born a Crime in reference to his birth in South Africa, similar laws remained in force in many US states until 1967 which means a number of people walking about the US today have an existence that was a crime.
Come to think of it, laws that are most frequently broken by the general public are also probably deeply broken in their concept or the worldview they were based on.
For instance speeding laws, while making sense on paper, are completely inadequate for the thing they want to improve. Structural changes to either the roads or other infra, the cars, or more deterring power than a slap on the wrist are probably needed in the places where they're routinely broken by normal people.
It was de-facto legal to begin with. The only people who were ever hurt by this law were the people who insisted on abiding by the law beyond the point of absurdity.
I appreciate that this is one less crime the average person commits every day that a capricious enforcer can make a big deal of but the flip side is that this reduces the competitive advantage of not being law abiding to the point of absurdity and your own detriment.
Seems to me like greater damage was being done to the people getting stopped and searched on the pretext of jaywalking. From the article:
> The Legal Aid Society called the legislation long overdue. The non-profit organization, which provides free legal representation to New Yorkers who cannot afford a lawyer, said police for decades have used the violation as a pretext to stop, question and frisk residents – especially those of color.
First, let's not forget that jaywalking is one of those "crimes" that is used as a pretense by police to harass people, usually young people and people of color.
Second, as a veteran jaywalker, my rule of thumb is that if a car has to hit their breaks even a little, or otherwise alter their trajectory, you're doing it wrong. The goal should be smooth movement for all.
Third, just because someone else is jaywalking does not mean you should follow them! Always asses your own path because someone else may be timing it differently.
> First, let's not forget that jaywalking is one of those "crimes" that is used as a pretense by police to harass people, usually young people and people of color.
"Walking while black"
Recently saw a courtroom video where a black man was being charged with marijuana possession. The reason for the initial stop was jaywalking, but the cop didn't even ticket him for the jaywalking, just used it as a justification for performing a search.
Judge threw the case out. Scolded the cop for clearly just wanting a reason to search a black man, evidenced by the lack of a ticket for the jaywalking.
And of course, it's just wild to me that in some states, you can get thrown in jail for YEARS for simple possession of a single nugget of marijuana, while in Oregon, my grocery store receipts literally have ads for marijuana dispensaries on the back.
> rule of thumb is [...] trajectory [...] The goal should be smooth movement for all.
A more restrictive one is avoiding driver cognitive load and distraction. City driving can be exhausting. And attention budget allocated to one concern, is less available for that other thing that's about to unexpectedly bite.
> just because someone else is jaywalking does not mean you should follow them!
Another is attending to crossing as broadcast group communication. Manhattan pedestrians waiting at a light, will, quite reasonably, cue on the motion of others. Thus I might do a red-light crossing at a sprint-and-jog, solely to avoid misleading others with a "people are starting/walking across now" cue. Especially with tourists, and anyone with attention prioritized elsewhere.
Another is to threshold on benefit. Judgement errors will be made, so gate on the current case being worth that. There are people I can't comfortably walk with, because for low-payoff diagonizations, or avoiding a moment of red-light repose, they fountain social cognitive load with abandon. The pedestrian equivalent of car high-acceleration and speeding for negligible marginal progress.
Yea the herd mentality is why jaywalking is unethical. I've witnessed someone try to cross early, triggering literally ~20 people to follow, only for the light to change and everyone collectively realized they had no right of way and stepped back.
It's easy to see how this could result in tragedy.
Germany, Japan, there is strict social compliance so it feels right anyway.
It's a bit more subtle than that.
In Germany, crossing at a red light is very frowned upon. Many Germans even wait at a red pedestrian light in the middle of the night when there's zero traffic.
Crossing streets in places without pedestrian lights or designated crossings is very common, though, and I believe usually legal. (I certainly haven't heard of anybody being fined for it.)
I don't know about ALL of Japan, but in Tokyo, pedestrians frequently ignore red lights and seeing cars with green lights waiting while a large group of jaywalkers is crossing in front of them is not an uncommon sight.
> Germany, Japan, there is strict social compliance
There is quite a bit of historical evidence for this being really bad for society.
Yes yes, the person outside of a car must provide deference to the car owner. Poor people serve the rich.
It's not about class, it's about staying alive. Cars win any encounter, hands down. My rule of crossing streets is to assume I am invisible and the drivers are not aware of my existence. This is, IMO, the only safe rule to follow when crossing the paths of fast moving, multi-ton machines with only minimal requirements made of the driver.
But we're talking about writing laws here. For example:
>with only minimal requirements made of the driver.
could easily be changed by changing the requirements.
> if a car has to hit their breaks even a little, or otherwise alter their trajectory, you're doing it wrong.
this is basically NYC law already, including pedestrian interactions
One time when I jaywalked in NYC I could have sworn that a cab, who was a half block away, accelerated when he saw me crossing the street. My impression has always been that people hate having their time wasted.
Traveling in Germany where there is a culture of biking and walking I found that jaywalking is never the less very much frowned upon by regular people and they see it as a transgression of norms.
I love hearing about this magical world where police harass random people for no reason. My experience in the city is police looking the other way when they shouldn't be. Everything from someone camping out in the middle of the sidewalk, illegal drug use in public, public urination and hopping turnstiles, just to list a few.
As a culture, we're pro jaywalking, which is fine, it should be legalized. You bare the risk entirely yourself if you choose to jaywalk. But let's not pretend like there is some overly strict police force that loves cracking skulls on any and every matter.
> I love hearing about this magical world where police harass random people for no reason.
Nothing random, magical, or pretend about it in the states. https://www.aclu.org/issues/racial-justice/race-and-criminal...
Talk to folks that don't share your skin tone. Make some friends. Ask them about their experiences, then judge for yourself.
You hear about it a lot because it's real and happens constantly, esp in past decades
There's also waiting 1-2 minutes for green light on a pedestrian semaphore while the street is entirely empty of cars. If no cops are in sight I definitely cross the street. Usually one or two people get encouraged and also cross but there's always the sticklers who would wait the end of the world if not given the green light.
hat's all very conscientious. You should also consider:
Forth, how many more people will be run over in NYC now?
"Second, as a veteran jaywalker, my rule of thumb is that if a car has to hit their breaks even a little, or otherwise alter their trajectory, you're doing it wrong."
You're doing it illegally in most places. If you imped the flow of traffic with the right of way, that's still an offense in most places. The article isn't clear if it's still a violation in NYC, but I bet it is.
I believe that was their point in calling themselves a veteran jaywalker. If it were a proper legal way of crossing given local laws, it is not jaywalking.
> First, let's not forget that jaywalking is one of those "crimes" that is used as a pretense by police to harass people, usually young people and people of color.
But let's also not pretend that decriminalizing jaywalking ends this harassment. In 2023, California decriminalized jaywalking when it's not dangerous to cross. But police have still used jaywalking as a pretense for stopping (and assaulting) people. https://missionlocal.org/2024/09/sf-violent-jaywalking-incid...
Let's not forget that jaywalking was essentially created by the automotive industry and its lobbyists, to make life more convenient for drivers. It started in car-heavy places like California, and eventually became a law virtually everywhere in the US, but was never really enforced in New York City, where most people walk or take public transit, rather than drive. If, like most New Yorkers, you walk several kilometers a day, through dozens of intersections, it's ludicrous to suggest that you should only walk at crosswalks, and only when the walk sign is lit. New Yorkers don't have a concept of "jaywalking"; it's just "walking."
>New Yorkers don't have a concept of "jaywalking"; it's just "walking."
It's also not a word in the German language at all, it's just "crossing the road". If you do it safely grate, if you don't not grate and if there are children nearby unsafe road crossing is really something you shouldn't do, especially it it's just because you are to lazy to walk a small bit more (I think crossing a road close by a pedestrian crossing while you aren't allowed to cross it is also the only way it is illegal outside of the case of "you action counting as endangering you or others" (like actually endangering not some absurd twisting of definitions)).
In Vienna, which has very good public transport and a large walking population, there is a strong culture against jaywalking. Locals will wait at the crosswalk sign even on minor roads with no traffic. Having lived in New York, London, and other places, I've never seen anything like it.
I'm willing to bet drivers in Vienna also obey traffic signals/laws, which is also something you cannot expect from NYC drivers.
>New Yorkers don't have a concept of "jaywalking"; it's just "walking."
As a general rule, I watch the cars and not the traffic lights. Mostly because many motorists (and NYC buses are the worst!) often don't pay attention to pedestrians, intersections or traffic lights. In fact, I'm more careful when walking through an intersection than in the middle of the street.
New York is probably the only place in the US where most of the drivers did not learn to drive here.
It's the most international city in the US, and a disproportionate number of people who use the roads (taxis, delivery drivers, etc) grew up in places that have a traffic system very different that the US's. People in New York routinely run red lights, roll through crosswalks, ride in the shoulder - things that you might encounter in other countries, but are generally considered disrespectful/dangerous in the US. When so many drivers grew up driving in places that tolerate those behaviors (either in their home countries or as native New Yorkers), it creates a road culture that's very different than you'd expect in other parts of America.
In other cities, you can take a "trust but verify" approach to traffic. Drivers will respect traffic lights. Pedestrians will cross where they're meant to. People will (only) use the lanes painted on the road. You have to be alert in case an outlier does something differently, but we generally consider those people selfish exceptions.
The written rules and the practiced culture deviate immensely in New York. You can't just operate by the rules and expect that everyone else will too.
Yes, crossing at intersections is much more complex, with traffic typically coming from many more directions than away from intersections.
And yet jaywalking accounts for the majority of pedestrian deaths, despite being a fraction of the number of crossings.
Believe it or not, most drivers do look out for pedestrians. Some better than others, but another set of eyeballs is invaluable, especially from the actual car that risks hitting you. Unfortunately, drivers do not expect people to cross in the middle of the street. And they never will, generally speaking. People are constantly milling around on the sidewalk, standing on curbs, doing all manner of crazy things, but not actually crossing. From a driver's perspective, a pedestrian about to cross the street typically looks indistinguishable from a pedestrian just doing the normal insane stuff pedestrians do. Then in a split second they go from normal pedestrian to crossing pedestrian, which is often much too late for a driver to respond, assuming they even noticed, unless it's at an expected crossing.
Yes, intersections feel dangerous and risky. But that's precisely why they're safer--pedestrians and drivers alike feel the anxiety, whereas when jaywalking both the pedestrian and car often don't sense any risk at all.
These deaths largely occur on high-speed roadways where people shouldn't be walking, or where the speed should be lower. The issue in both cases is a lack of public transit density. If you're in a dense area with a ton of pedestrians, the speed should be low enough that you CAN react, and there should be transit options that lower the number of car trips. In less dense areas, where automobile speeds are higher, auto and pedestrian traffic should be segregated; again, there should be other transit options that keep pedestrians away from spaces ripe for collisions.
Essentially, build more rail/bus lanes/bike lanes and lower traffic speed. The problem isn't jaywalking and it never was.
I live in SF. We just had an accident the other day that indisputably can be pinned on jaywalking--late at night, cross where there was an actual fence, and the car hadn't been speeding. In fact, the limit is 25 there. Jaywalking figures prominently in pedestrian deaths in this city, and it's not simply because of speeding as there simply aren't that many streets where you can go that fast, and in fact in some of the worst areas (e.g. Tenderloin) you'll find the slowest speeds. Pedestrian deaths are also often elderly, as younger victims would have been more likely to survive at the speeds they were hit.
Another major issue in this city, though, is visibility, what with all the tightly packed parallel parking, and streets (especially in the western half) just the perfectly wrong width for modern car A pillars. I would fully support shutting down dozens of streets that criss-cross the city to through traffic and dedicate them to biking and pedestrians. The bike lanes here (where people end up dying, regardless) piss me off to no end as much of time the city could have just given an entire street over to bikes a block away, rather than some of the most trafficked (by cars) thoroughfares, and everybody would be better off.
But another odd thing about SF is that pedestrians simply don't look. In every other major city I've lived or visited, in the US and around the world, the vast majority of pedestrians look before crossing a street. I've lived in SF for nearly 20 years and I can't get over how people just cross the streets--wide streets, busy streets, blind corners, etc--without a care in the world. It doesn't make it any less tragic, but... it's just so fscking bizarre. And I don't mean to excuse their deaths. Cars should be more careful, and they're definitely not--I'm wary of letting my children cross streets alone here, and I get honked regularly for not gunning it the moment a pedestrian crosses the center line when crossing. At the same time I find it very difficult to get too worked up when people blithely step in front of dump trucks (accident two weeks ago where even the city said there was absolutely nothing the city could have done to improve that intersection--the person just walked in front of the truck against every precaution).
On street parking really is the worse as a pedestrian. Yes, you can technically cross at any intersection in Seattle, but cars are parked so close that they won't see you unless you poke your head out. A lot of pedestrian problems could be solved by getting rid of or severely restricting on street parking.
Also, drugs are a huge issue. We have a lot of pedestrian/car accidents, something like 70% of them involves controlled substance abuse from either the driver or pedestrian (and much of the time, its the pedestrian). Fent really is a big problem.
> I would fully support shutting down dozens of streets that cross-cross the city to through traffic and dedicate them to biking and pedestrians.
I dream of this version of SF...
Given the size of the city, and amount of pedestrians and general walkability, I'm always amazed at how hard it is to get a pedestrian street here and there.... Even the peninsula is starting to get them in a way we seem to not be able to.
and the separation has to be realistic.
if you have businesses and residences fronting onto opposite sides of a high speed road and the nearest legal crossing is a half mile away, that's not realistic. almost nobody will decide "hey let me add a whole mile of walking to my journey and a few minutes at a signal to cross safely."
> And yet jaywalking accounts for the majority of pedestrian deaths, despite being a fraction of the number of crossings.
It's because some people think jumping out of bush at 11pm wearing all black to cross right in front of a car is a good idea.
Its just an assumption that all people on the roads are having 100% focus on whole surrounding situation, 100% of the time. If you drive a bit as the only parent in the car with 2+ small kids, you know that ain't true, and yes complex intersections are one of the worst places.
Plus you have literal a-holes who ignore traffic rules on purpose, which in place where I live (Switzerland) is maybe 80% of the cyclists. I've had few near miss (5cm max) as a pedestrian where cyclist with red light zoomed through thick crowd crossing without even slowing down. Bear in mind that >=30kmh hit of pedestrian can easily end up in fatality or permanent disability, when wife worked on urgency in biggest hospital around here, there were some dead pedestrians from such collisions.
Yep. The times I've been hit by a car while walking it was the car rolling through stop signs, lights and turns.
Since they made this change in California last year, I cross where ever when it is safe and convenient. I'm surprised how big of difference it made to the convenience and speed of walking somewhere. No more waiting for 2 different lights just to get to the opposite corner.
I had to look this up. "Safe jaywalking" is legal in California, but if you risk a collision, you can be cited.
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VC 21955. (a) Between adjacent intersections controlled by traffic control signal devices or by police officers, pedestrians shall not cross the roadway at any place except in a crosswalk.
(b) (1) A peace officer, as defined in Chapter 4.5 (commencing with Section 830) of Title 3 of Part 2 of the Penal Code, shall not stop a pedestrian for a violation of subdivision (a) unless a reasonably careful person would realize there is an immediate danger of a collision with a moving vehicle or other device moving exclusively by human power.
(2) This subdivision does not relieve a pedestrian from the duty of using due care for their safety.
(3) This subdivision does not relieve a driver of a vehicle from the duty of exercising due care for the safety of any pedestrian within the roadway.
>I cross where ever when it is safe and convenient
I do, too.
But -- in California -- it remains illegal to do so in sections of roadway that are betwixt two traffic lights, no matter how safe an convenient it is.
(We've got very similarly-worded restrictions here in Ohio, too, FWIW.)
> Between adjacent intersections controlled by traffic control signal devices
Does this mean diagonally? What's the distance to "adjacent"? One city block? Two? Does this mean that jaywalking is still practically illegal in most dense cities/downtown areas?
The lack of clarity is pretty frustrating with many of these laws. I understand the practical need for wiggle room, but this almost seems like a trap! My naive interpretation is that police will still have plenty of opportunity to use jaywalking in the ways that the law was trying to prevent, especially in densely populated areas.
I used to live on a street where crossing it legally meant a one mile trek, so it's appreciated, especially since I was warned once, but I now have no idea if it would be legal or not, since there was a light half mile in either direction.
> An “intersection” is the area embraced within the prolongation of the lateral curb lines, or, if none, then the lateral boundary lines of the roadways, of two highways which join one another at approximately right angles or the area within which vehicles traveling upon different highways joining at any other angle may come in conflict.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
My question was specifically about the "adjacent" part of "adjacent intersections". That link explains "intersections". What does it mean when those are "adjacent"?
Aye. I can't find that part spelled out anywhere for CA. (There's probably case law on the topic, but IANAL.)
My lay interpretation is, I think, the same as yours: In order to avoid doing illegal things, one would have to walk a mile to cross the road in your example.
And as a lay jaywalker: I'm absolutely certain that I would never do that; I'd simply cross the road when when it was safe to do so. (I'd also like to hope that I would have the time, money, and opportunity to have a turn in front of a judge for any resulting citation because this kind of result is absolute horseshit.)
If it's illegal but you can't be stopped for it, it might not really be illegal?
Also, there's not that many adjacent controlled intersections. Driveways are intersections, too, and are rarely controlled.
Ah. Sovcit logic.
How...detestable.
As a veteran jaywalker, let me propose that you avoid crossing at junctions, where crossings are usually located, ideally cross at one leg, especially good if it’s a one way street.
Less traffic, fewer inputs/outputs to keep under observations.
Where I live, just about all of the downtown streets are one-ways and it does wonders for getting around both on foot and in an automobile. Though the latter will be more punishing if you don't know the lay of the land, and there will be congestion near on-ramps during rush hour.
>waiting for 2 different lights just to get to the opposite corner.
A solution sometimes seen in London is a “Pedestrian Scramble”, where pedestrians are explicitly given full (and even diagonal) access to a junction with all other traffic stopped.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedestrian_scramble
In Seattle, they call these "all walks" or officially, "all way walks." I love them, since I don't feel like I have to watch out for drivers making left turns.
The dichotomy is pretty interesting to me, given that most major cities in the country have been running high-publicity programs for the last decade to do everything possible to reduce car-related deaths, especially protecting pedestrians and bicyclists. (Cities like NYC and Seattle call it "vision zero", a vision of zero serious traffic injuries/deaths). They work to separate pedestrians and bicyclists from traffic, slow cars down with "traffic calming measures", lower speed limits, and so on.
Those stated goals seem, to me, to clash with the idea of now making it up to people's discretion to cross roads wherever and whenever they want, rather than at dedicated, marked, predictable, traffic crossings equipped with signal lights that tell cars and pedestrians who has the right of way.
I'm curious in X years if the data will or will not show more pedestrians got hit by cars following this change.
Partially it's because this is a false dichotomy. The most efficient and safe system isn't something that erects permanent barriers between pedestrians and cars – because a system like this creates ugly cities and undesirable walking, cycling, and driving conditions – it's something that allows them to coexist safely, generally by making them slower, more visible, and more predictable.
I walk/run, drive, and cycle in NYC. In my view, the way NYC works in most intersections and roads is pretty close to maximally efficient. And it generally gets better over time, although it has occasionally gotten worse in the name of safety.
The things that make it that way include (1) mostly one-way roads, which makes jaywalking significantly easier and safer (2) mostly single-lane or dual-lane roads (3) well-tuned traffic lights with relatively brief cycles (4) relatively low speed limits that are brutally enforced with speed traps (5) an abundance of red light cameras.
The least safe parts of the city are those with more than 2 lanes of traffic, especially if it's bi-directional, and those with really poorly designed cycling infrastructure. My pet peeve roads are the ones that look like this:
| sidewalk | cycle lane | parking spots | road |
e.g. Grand St in Williamsburg, because this design makes jay-walking extremely dangerous. and it makes cyclists go faster than they otherwise-would, because of the (occasionally-enough-to-be-dangerous false) sense of being insulated from both pedestrians and cars.
The other major source of risks, again IME, are cyclists going counter-traffic on one-way roads, and people on electric-assisted bikes in general traveling >20mph.
I was in Morocco this summer, and for the most part, there is no separation between where motorbikes can ride and pedestrians can walk. It's totally intermixed.
At first I was concerned, but then I realized it's actually a lot safe. The motorbikes were cautious because there could be a pedestrian at any turn. And the pedestrians were cautious because there could be a motorbike at any moment.
Didn't see a single accident or even any near misses.
There is a question of critical mass that you see in cities that are built around the concept of pedestrians first. Cars go slower, give right of way to pedestrians and generally don't drive as aggressively as we see in most North American cities.
In Europe you see plenty of places that are pedestrian first and the car drivers are expected to act differently as a result. Something similar happens in Amsterdam where it is a cyclist first city. Cyclists expect right of way and cars are few and far between.
So long as you go about thinking of this in terms of car first as a de facto part of life you won't understand how good it could be with less cars.
Could be. Or maybe drivers will get used to people popping up everywhere and will therefore drive with more concentration. I'm not sure, like you say, it will be interesting to see the data.
It's more of an acceptance of reality. Pedestrians in NYC cross however they want and police only ever intervene if they're doing something excessively dangerous (which I believe is still illegal) or if they're looking for a excuse to harass someone. It's the latter they are trying to eliminate. This will likely have no impact on road safety and slightly reduce the number of people getting hassled by police.
There's also the balance of power that NYC is actually mostly pedestrian. Anything that empowers pedestrians and inhibits cars is a net win for freedom of movement.
If you are at a crosswalk and there is no car in sight, it's dumb to wait for the proper light.
I remember visiting California in the 1990s and was amazed to see my California friends waiting patiently at the light, looking at me like I was uncivilized because I just crossed the street whenever it was safe.
Current day Sweden: People cross tend to cross the street whenever it feels safe, unless there's some mom/dad with young kids in tow nearby. Then it's polite to wait for the light to turn green. We often have very little traffic on our streets though, and they are often not very wide.
It's technically illegal to jaywalk but not punishable unless you manage to cause a traffic accident, somehow. I like these pragmatic laws.
In the United States, having laws like that results in discriminatory policing (see many threads here). Probably less than an issue in a country that doesn't have such issues with race.
When I was visiting Finland in 1990, my friend told me the police were so bored there that jaywalking was very likely to result in a ticket.
Surprisingly the word jaywalking comes from jay-driving which was coined to describe drivers driving on the wrong side of the road. Initially the term jaywalking really only applied to poor etiquette when walking on the sidewalk.
It's hard to tell from the article - is it still a violation if you don't yield to traffic with the right of way? If so, that's how jaywalking works in the vast majority of places. If you cross and imped the flow of traffic with the right of way, you are jaywalking and will be ticketed for it. This is just standard in most places.
I will still be using the cross walks everywhere I go. Because there's no shortcut across the street that is worth me stopping traffic or getting hit by a car.
Jaywalking is for selfish and impatient people who are bad at assessing risk.
Unless the street is completely empty, I guess.
As someone who has never lived in a city this is strange to me. I live in a relatively dense part of Louisiana, but around here you couldn't walk at all without jaywalking. There aren't even sidewalks in a lot of places. You just walk along the side of the road.
Well if the government doesn't provide infrastructure for you to use, then you have no choice but to jaywalk.
What I think is crazy is all of the cities that just don't build sidewalks. I understand in certain rural areas, but yeah, many midwestern and southern cities are downright hostile to pedestrians.
Good riddance. Crosswalks at intersections are nearly obsolete due to the thick A-pillars in modern cars. I would rather have mid-block crosswalks with warning lights and traffic calming devices.
It's quite the opposite isn't it? Drivers don't have to see pedestrians; they stop at red lights, and pedestrians cross when they get a walk signal.
> Crosswalks at intersections are nearly obsolete due to the thick A-pillars in modern cars.
What?
A-pillars are the pillars of a car that support the windshield and the front of the roof. They've gotten bigger in recent years - which reduces the visibility of pedestrians, cyclists, and other cars. Drivers can't see through pillars. Big pillars are safer for the driver in case of a collision or a rollover, but paradoxically also makes that car more dangerous for everyone else on the road. I don't think they make crosswalks obsolete, but crossing the road is more dangerous today than it was 50 years ago.
https://chi.streetsblog.org/2022/06/08/pickups-suvs-are-driv....
Your citation blames the size of vehicles for the increase in danger, not A pillars specifically. And the demonstration was how many children could be sitting in front of a pickup truck before the driver could see them.
> “They are larger, heavier and higher up from the road than smaller cars and create blind spots that make it challenging for drivers to see vulnerable road users like pedestrians and cyclists,”
I drive a car with enormous A pillars (coupe version of a convertible) and never have issues seeing the children playing in the street because of it. Likely because most 8 year olds would be at eye level with me.
A modern F150 however, an entire car could be obscured by the long, high hood of those.
Yeah okay, I understand pedestrian visibility. But cross walks have nothing to do with that really?
Like it's a place where you (usually) stop and when you are stopped, pedestrians can go.
I don't see how jaywalking would be better than a dedicated place where pedestrians are expected to be. Thick a-frames or not.
> But cross walks have nothing to do with that really?
The posted article mentioned accidents specifically at cross walks.
> The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that drivers of SUVs, pickups, vans, and minivans are “substantially more likely” than car drivers to hit pedestrians when making turns,
The reasoning though is mainly speculation. I've found that minivans offer exceptional visibility. So it could be as simple as people who buy SUVs, minivans, and pickups are just worse drivers than those in coupes and sedans.
My theory is that people just don't consider pedestrians when making left turns at intersections with cross walks. Instead, they focus on oncoming traffic and commit to a turn before looking at where they are going.
They mean people standing up are invisible to cars in a lot of perspectives.
is there a difference, legally, regarding vehicular involuntary manslaughter, between hitting someone who is jaywalking and someone who is not. Example, a person walks into a 65 mph thoroughfare after a curve, since they are no longer in the commencement of a crime, does that make the act tantamount to hitting someone in a crosswalk?
As far as I know, NYC is unique in that pedestrians do not have the right of way. Everywhere else you must legally stop for a pedestrian but in NYC you don't. (edit, since people seem confused: This doesn't mean you can run them over. It just means you don't have to stop if you are going to block their path. Everywhere else, you have to stop if you are going to block a pedestrian's path, no matter where that pedestrian is.)
They have to do this or people would just block all traffic all the time.
So this really is just to stop racial profiling. It's really not going to change much in the day to day goings on in NYC.
The Last Clear Chance Doctrine (in tort law, not criminal law), which is pretty widely accepted, is that regardless of right of way, if you are able to avoid an accident, then you must.
Having the right of way matters less than the ability to avoid an accident. If you plow into a pedestrian that you saw from three blocks away, you will absolutely be considered liable civilly since you had a clear chance to avoid a collision.
The general rule in almost every vehicle code is that having the right of way does not relieve you of the obligation to do everything reasonable to avoid collisions and injuries.
Nowhere do you have the right to drive into a human being, whether there's laws against jaywalking or not.
That’s not what that means. It means you’re allowed to block their path. Everywhere else you must stop if you will block the path of a person. In NYC you do not.
Of course you can’t run them down.
So if you are waiting at an intersection pedestrian crossings and getting impatient you can just move over a bit and cross anyway?
You can cross wherever and whenever is safe to do so. If traffic conditions don’t facilitate this, pedestrian crossings provide guaranteed crossing points where pedestrians have right of way.
Basically it means that pedestrians are allowed to cross the road anywhere, anytime, but they still have to yield to car traffic except at pedestrian crossings without a semaphore or at the Walk signal. It's a very common-sense law.
> they still have to yield to car traffic except at pedestrian crossings without a semaphore or at the Walk signal.
This isn't true. Car traffic must yield to pedestrians. Pedestrians don't always have the right of way, but you (hopefully obviously) can't just arbitrarily mow them down.
The only time this would matter is if you hit someone and it went to court. Thus in practice, you have to yield to pedestrians whenever you can reasonably do so. It's actually written into NY law (section 1146: "Due Care").
No, this is a misunderstanding of what right of way means. Drivers are never allowed to intentionally cause accidents, either with other cars or with pedestrians. If you have right of way in an intersection but a car is nevertheless not yielding to you, you are not allowed to plow into them if you can reasonably avoid it. That doesn't mean that you don't actually have right of way, or that you need to stop at every intersection to make sure that someone is not yielding.
The same is true with pedestrians crossing where they have to yield to cars. It's their responsibility to check that no cars are passing before crossing. At a crosswalk, drivers will slow down if they see a pedestrian heading towards the crossing; they don't need to (and won't) at other places. Of course, if they see a pedestrian in the middle of the road, they are not allowed to hit them, just like they're not allowed to hit a car.
We're saying the same thing, so "misunderstanding" is a bit of a strong claim.
> At a crosswalk, drivers will slow down if they see a pedestrian heading towards the crossing; they don't need to (and won't) at other places.
They literally must. It's in the law I cited:
https://law.justia.com/codes/new-york/vat/title-7/article-26...
You can go to jail if you don't take due care to avoid hitting a pedestrian, or even an animal. The right of way of the person being hit is irrelevant. But sure, if you, pedestrian, cause an accident due to your failure to respect right of way, you have also violated a traffic law, and you could be punished for it.
In practice, in a place like NYC, you're going to have to go to pretty extreme lengths for this to apply. Maybe if you dart into traffic maliciously, and a car swerves to avoid you and hits something? I dunno. It's hard to imagine a scenario.
Basically updating the law to match what everyone already does.
In every part of the world. The whole concept of jaywalking feels backwards.
From the article ”It also allows for crossing against traffic signals and specifically states that doing so is no longer a violation of the city’s administrative code.”
Did you read the article? Pedestrians can always cross but they then don't have the right of way and have to yield to traffic. Basically everyone can keep doing what they've been doing all along but police can no longer arrest them for it through selective enforcement.
>Did you read the article? Pedestrians can always cross but they then don't have the right of way and have to yield to traffic. Basically everyone can keep doing what they've been doing all along but police can no longer arrest them for it through selective enforcement.
As a lifelong New Yorker, I can tell you that arrest is never an option for any violation of the city's administrative code. Rather it's a fine.
And as you alluded to, black and brown people were the vast majority of those fined under the jaywalking regulation.
As a cis white guy, I didn't even know that jaywalking was 'illegal' in NYC until folks started talking about 'legalizing' it a few years ago.
As I mentioned, I've lived here pretty much all my life and have 'jaywalked' in front of police hundreds if not thousands of times and none have ever even looked at me funny.
So yes, this is a very good thing. Just one very, very small step on the road to 'a more perfect union', IMHO.
How do they fine you without arresting you? Tape a citation to your back as you walk past?
Most people's idea of arrest means taken into custody, rather than the actual meaning of stopped.
If they prevent you from walking away, you are arrested.
It means pedestrians are always right even when they are wrong. Especially when they are wrong.
It means they can do whatever they want whenever they want wherever they want and everybody else on the road is obligated to accomodate them.
If only this were true. Only some people drive, but even drivers become pedestrians as soon as they get out of their car.
What's the alternative? Stand-your-ground laws but for the right to get to Starbucks 10 seconds faster?
Not growing up in america I never understood what jaywalking was - I legit assumed it was a pedestrian crossing a freeway because nothing else made sense. Growing up I was taught explicitly to do what in the US was a crime: crossing between intersections because it is vastly safer than crossing at intersections.
Obviously, there's a more complex issue with jaywalking where it is a crime that is trivially easy to enforce in a discriminatory manner, and it creates endless opportunities for pretextual searches once NY's clearly unconstitutional stop-and-frisk laws were overturned.
Jaywalking is any crossing in a wrong / illegal way, not about intersections specifically. Mostly it's about not using crosswalks, so I don't see how it collides with what Europe does.
In Europe you also have differences with some countries where crosswalk lights are as a mandate from God and nobody will cross even at 2am deserted road. And then you have countries where the crosswalk lights are mere decorations.
I had an identity crisis in Germany when, at 2am on a deserted road, a group of hooligan-looking teenage boys told me off for crossing on red.
Something like that happened to me on my first day as an adult in Germany. Wide road, Sunday afternoon, visibility over 1km in both directions, not a car in sight. I was accompanied by a girl from the place where I was to work. I had just met her and she was showing me to the nearby convenience store.
She suddenly started screaming when I crossed the street while the pedestrian light was red. I didn't get what the problem was so I crossed back, to much drama.
She (or her boyfriend) later told me there was a long-running campaign during the 90s aiming to curb pedestrian death, that featured vivid TV spots showing kids die because they routinely saw adults jaywalking and imitated them.
So jaywalking = killing children.
Also German children of all ages are encouraged to say to jaywalkers "You're not a good example for the children.". It happened to me more than once.
This is also very much the agitprop in Russia, although in practice people mostly just ignore it. Sometimes in very frustrating ways, too, like crossing the road on red in front of an ambulance with the emergency light on.
I was observing a parade once and stepped into the stopped traffic to talk to a driver about his vehicle.
I felt terrible later when I realized I had set a dangerous example for all of the kids around.
When there might plausibly be little kids watching, I make sure I'm very obvious about checking for oncoming traffic. Repeatedly. Before & during crossing the road.
Where onlooking kiddies seem implausible, I pretty much do the same thing. Far better to be an obvious chicken than dead right.
> In Europe you also have differences with some countries where crosswalk lights are as a mandate from God and nobody will cross even at 2am deserted road
I think that's mostly just certain parts of Germany.
It was a fun evening with the guys from Bavaria in Berlin
The distinction is about pedestrians being forced to use crossings. In the UK you can use them, but you can cross where you like if you want to.
Also in the UK we have pedestrian refuge islands. Not a crossing, as there is no pedestrian priority, but useful little bits of road furniture that reduces the likelihood of getting mown down by cars. As a side effect they also tend to slow down car traffic due to narrowing of the road. Americans may see them as official jaywalking points.
https://www.trafficchoices.co.uk/traffic-schemes/refuge-isla...
Not entirely true. Generally true in England & Wales and Scotland aside from motorways, but in Northern Ireland the cops can fine you for it, although it rarely seems to be enforced.
https://www.psni.police.uk/sites/default/files/2023-01/00008...
Jaywalking is a pedestrian crossing outside of explicitly designated crossings points. In the US that means by *default( any pedestrian crossing any street at any location other than a pedestrian crossing or an intersection, regardless of distance to such a point.
There is a massive difference between "country culturally tends towards using designated crossing points" and "it's a criminal offense to not use them". I'm curious about which countries outside of the US, especially in Europe, that criminalize jaywalking.
If France, the law states that a pedestrians should use designated crossing points if one is available within 50 meters. Crossing at a red light is also illegal.
It is punishable with a 4€ fixed fine. I don't know of any lesser punishable crime and it is rarely enforced in practice despite jaywalking being common. But it is still a crime.
It's a spectrum. E.g. in Russia it's illegal to cross the road if there's a crosswalk or intersection visible from the point where you cross it (and cops will fine you for it - or rather, attempt to extort a bribe).
Which countries obey crossing lights as strictly as you describe? I've been to lots of European countries and none were like that. Not in the way that the US is.
Poland is pretty strict. They will fine you if you cross the street where there isnt a crosswalk. And generally people wait for green light in Poland even if there are zero cars on the road.
Parts of Germany, lots of Poland, Austria, etc. South Europe where I'm from is "decoration land", but the more east you go the harsher they are/were with enforcement so the more people abide.
In countries where open police corruption is more routine, cops love enforcing such laws because it's a very low-effort to extort bribes. Not even because the fine is significant, but because the procedure to pay it once given a ticket may be rather onerous compared to just handing over a banknote and going on your way.
I would say they are generally obeyed in Germany, of course there are always people that walk over a red light but generally, most people obey it.
Illegal in Russia. There is even a common trick during driving exam: examiner ask you to let a person cross in a middle of a road. You do that, and you've failed the exam.
I'm currently in Tokyo and it is the norm to wait for the green man, even if it is a two-lane road there isn't a car in sight. I can understand waiting at one of the mega intersections, where you can barely make out the pedestrians on the other side - definitely waiting for permission to cross there.
Also currently in Tokyo. While the norm, it's starting to change! I've definitely seen a lot of younger people willing to cross against a red when it's obviously safe.
In addition to the ones people already mentioned: In Copenhagen it was very rare for people to cross on red. I never got and dirty looks when I did it, but it was definitely not the norm.
Germany and Poland both do this.
In Poland I always respect the pedestrian lights. Contrary to France and even Germany, drivers expect you to respect them, and especially in Warsaw there is a very high tolerance on speeding on big wide arters. Cars crossing intersections at speeds of more than 90km/h (7.8 furlongs per minute for Americans) are usual in Warsaw.
56mph
>90km/h (7.8 furlongs per minute for Americans)
As an American, I had to do the math on that -- which is really annoying.
If you want to provide us with something we can understand, it's furlongs per fortnight, not per minute. ;)
Finland, for one
> it is vastly safer than crossing at intersections
Why is it safer?
Other comments have pointed out that intersections are difficult to cross safely because cars are coming from multiple directions, often in non-obvious ways.
Between the intersections you only have two directions to worry about.
Yes, but at intersections drivers are forced to slow down and look for traffic and maybe prepare to make a turn, so you can expect them to move slower and have more situational awareness.
Am I wrong?
You should be right! But you are misidentifying the problem.
The problem here is not the norm, it's the exceptions. Some drivers don't slow down or pay attention. Those are the ones that cause all the risk. While normal drivers behave better at intersections, a pedestrian can't trust that every driver will do that.
In a mid block crossing, you don't have to rely on drivers behaving a certain way, so the predictability is increased and the overall result is safer.
I witnessed a driver make an aggressive left turn as soon as a light turned green, to beat the first car going the other way.
Unfortunately that aggressive left turn ended abruptly when they hit a pedestrian crossing the street on that same green light. Thankfully the pedestrian seemed mostly shaken up, but I have to imagine there were long-term consequences of that.
> crossing between intersections because it is vastly safer than crossing at intersections
It's true in most city streets because even if cars drive faster outside of intersections, if we walk fast and have good visibility then it's not an issue.
There are very busy roundabouts with crosswalks right next to them. As a driver having to stop means being scared for your car's behind.
The speed of vehicles is not super relevant in the context of the intrinsic safety for a pedestrian crossing the road. Assuming reasonable amounts of visibility.
The safest way for a pedestrian to cross a road is a location where there is the greatest opportunity to avoid a collision at any speed. That means minimizing number of directions you need to watch for traffic, and maximizing the likelihood of being in the line of sight of drivers. That means you want to cross away from intersections.
Crossing between intersections means that as a pedestrian you only have to be concerned about traffic from two (or even just one) directions, and for oncoming traffic you will definitionally be in the direction the drivers are facing.
Crossing at intersections means as a pedestrian you are having to watch for traffic from more directions, including directly behind you, and traffic approaching the intersection has drivers who are necessarily going to be having to look at places other than directly in front of them in the case of traffic coming towards you on the street you are crossing, and traffic coming from the other streets may not by physically able to see you on the intersecting cross street (from their PoV) prior to actually reaching the intersection.
Hence crossing between intersections is safer because it reduces the likelihood of any collision, as it's easier for everyone involved to be aware of everyone else.
Speed of a pedestrian vs vehicle collision is much less of a safety factor than just not having the collision at all, because the difference in speed between "walk away" and "going to hospital" is very small - well within normal intersection speeds. At higher speeds of course the likelihood of going to the morgue skyrockets, but when considering the safety of "low speed" collisions it's important to consider a "low speed" collision that is minor for an adult is still easily able to kill a child, and the speed _required_ to kill is not that high as demonstrated by multiple pedestrian vs cyclist collisions that have killed people (I think generally older people or just really bad luck but its just important to recognize that the "serious damage to soft and squishy people" is way lower than people think).
Do you not have pedestrian crossings/stoplights for pedestrians in your country?
In the UK we have various types of pedestrian crossing, but they're an optional convenience. You can use them, or you can find a safe place and time to cross yourself.
And if no one uses them, they weren’t well designed to start with.
I guess the jaywalking law is partly to avoid disrupting traffic, but the most efficient cross is the one when no traffic is present, and that's more likely in the middle of the road than at an intersection.
Yep - prioritisation of motorists is baked in.
This makes sense for freeways but in cities this should be flipped.
In the UK, not at every intersection, by any means. In fact, it's probably a minority in many places. We're taught how to cross in the middle of the road.
Of course, the question is "is it a crime to cross a road outside of those designated points" in america the answer is often "yes".
Which means the only legal place to cross a road is an intersection, which is significantly less safe for pedestrians.
Next time you're going for a walk, try to estimate what % of intersections or crossing points are protected (stop signs for all roads, traffic lights, or barriers). Similarly, when you're out driving try and see how much you slow down for each intersection (ie non-jaywalking crossing points) - this is not a judgement on driving style this is just about working out relative safety. Any unprotected intersection you go through without significantly slowing down (think dropping to parking lot speed) for is a location where crossing away from the intersection is safer.
Safety for pedestrians crossing a road is primarily from collision avoidance - as I said in another comment the amount of damage from a pedestrian vs vehicle collision high at even "low" car speeds.
In most places, jaywalking typically means crossing outside of a crosswalk while being within a short distance of a crosswalk. It's more dangerous for pedestrians near crosswalks, cars are turning and have limited visibility, so using the crosswalk (when crossing is allowed, if there's a crossing indicator) is the rule.
If you are a certain distance away from a crosswalk, you are allowed to cross the road but must yield to oncoming cars.
It's really pretty simple and common-sense. Of course there are differences in local rules, but this is the way it usually works.
I think "no jaywalking because safety" would make more sense if crosswalks were totally safe. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in NY, can't traffic move over crosswalks even against traffic lights, in some circumstances? I always find that confusing-and frightening!
New York City is actually one of the few US jurisdictions that DO NOT permit right turns on red as a default rule.
In certain parts of the USA, cars are allowed to turn right from the first lane even on a red light, unless there is some explicit sign prohibiting it in that intersection.
Yes, and in that case the car has to yield to the pedestrian, if the pedestrian has the right of way. It's really very simple, and in every basic driving test.
The problem is the driver is likely looking to the left to see if it's safe to quickly pull out and not bother looking to their right for that pedestrian stepping out into the intersection.
I've been lightly hit a few times because of people like that.
I've also almost been hit by people ignoring the stop line and stopping abruptly in the crosswalk area immediately in front of me.
The laws are clear about this. If the crosswalk has a crossing indicator, allowing people to cross, then the people have the right of way. It doesn't matter what the person in the car is wanting to do, they must yield to pedestrians. If they hit a pedestrian, then it's clearly the driver's fault. If a pedestrian crosses outside of a crosswalk (a distance away from a crosswalk), they are supposed to yield to oncoming cars. If they don't and the pedestrian gets hit by a car, it's the pedestrian's fault. Got it?
Unless expressly prohibited, eg by said sign, right-turn-on-red defaults to being legal across vthe US.
Unless I'm missing something: Defining traffic laws is something that the states do on their own, and these aren't things that the federal government generally gets involved with.
Thus, there are 50 different sets of these laws, plus DC. Any similarities between them may be nothing more than incidental.
Not entirely. Right-on-red is by default illegal in NYC, and will be soon in DC and Atlanta.
Also a good number of states prohibit right-on-red by default when the red light is in the shape of an arrow.
I grew up in Southern California. My parents strictly observed traffic laws, and riding in the car with them, I would often hear their disapproving gossip about pedestrians' faux pas, including wearing black at night.
In high school, a classmate tried to help me loosen up a bit, and he'd encourage our group to cross a busy stroad. "They'll stop! They'll stop for you!" he assured me. He was right...
I visited Catalonia awhile ago. My companion was a native there and helped me understand local customs. I was able to drive her car a little bit, LHD, although the roundabouts tended to bewilder me. On foot, we'd approach a busy street and she encouraged me to just cross. She showed me how to hold out a hand as a signal of my intent. Motorists would slow and yield. She was also right.
I heard that the walk signal buttons are called "beg buttons", as in "pedestrians beg to enter the street". I use them scrupulously. My justification is that a theoretical personal injury lawsuit is easier to litigate, if I can prove I was doing everything right.
Does anyone know if beg button presses get tracked? I often wonder if pressing it increases some great counter in the sky that future city planners can use to design an intersection better.
> My justification is that a theoretical personal injury lawsuit is easier to litigate, if I can prove I was doing everything right.
I guess the way I see it is if you want your grave stone to read "Here lies AStonesThrow. He had the right of way!" then by all means, step out into traffic--they'll always stop for you.
Sounds like survivorship bias to me. A substantial fraction of drivers are generally not looking forward or paying attention at any given time... you're just rolling the dice by assuming they will see you and stop.
I kind of wonder now whether that was the most broken law in history.
I find it comical that it's usually liberal leaning folks that want to use early 1900s interpretation of the law for why it's bogus. Yet they want "regulation" for so many contemporary issues. A true liberal would adapt and move with the times: vehicles are the primary way people move in most parts of the country. The average speed AND acceleration of cars (and the people driving them) is MUCH higher than the days of the Model-T. "Regulating" the coexistence of vehicles and living meat bags seems like common sense, and saying "cars weren't here 120 years ago" is irrelevant.
Nah it's definitely speeding.
Asking pedestrians to cross streets where cars are stopped and they are mostly protected?
How is that broken?
Granted you've misinterpreted the posters point - but I will respond to your perception of his point (which I agree with).
You could easily imagine a world where pedestrians have the right of way on the streets, and cars "request access to the road" in a similar way that pedestrians do. Actually, if this is not easy for you to imagine - it suggests enormous internal bias.
No need to imagine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqQSwQLDIK8
Wow, an intersection like that in the USA would have at least one road rage death per day from violently impatient drivers.
That's literally how it works in the UK
Population density of London: 15,000 per square mile
Population density of Manhattan: 78,000 per square mile
(according to wikipedia on both)
However, pedestrians can cross wherever/whenever they think that it's safe to do so anywhere in Britain (Northern Ireland I think has some kind of jaywalking law). It's not just in London or other cities, but remote countrysides too where crossings may not be available. Pedestrians have priority, but it's definitely frowned upon to cause vehicles to have to slow/swerve to avoid a collision.
The Highway Code was recently updated (a few years ago) to make it more explicit that pedestrians crossing a side road junction should have priority over vehicles trying to turn into the side road. However, that's not necessarily followed by all drivers/cyclists etc.
Basically, drivers/cyclists are expected to make all efforts to avoid a collision and will be considered at fault unless it's a scenario where the pedestrian steps into the road without enough time for the driver/cyclist to react and avoid them.
I don't think that's not very comparable. You don't get that many high rise residential buildings in central London, but it gets all the workers anyway. It's not as extreme, but think of Shibuya crossing having 0 population. We'd need some measure of people on the streets instead.
So on that basis, jaywalking should be prohibited on Manhattan Island, because it's population density is greater than that of London, which we have for some reason decided is the arbiter, but allowed virtually everywhere else in the US, where the population density is less than London?
I think your trying to imply something, but I cannot tell what. Could you possibly make it explicit?
If you allow pedestrians to cross anywhere at any time with right of way, that can work to a certain density. On the other end of the scale, traffic will be at a standstill due to a constant stream of pedestrians. I don't know exactly where on that scale either of those cities is, but the argument that it works in the UK where the density is 5x less seems flawed.
I've posted in the sibling thread r.e. the density (which I believe you have underestimated by several orders of magnitude), however a stroll around london will show you that, excepting arterial roads, cars always have to deal with pedestrians crossing at any time and place, including between you and the car ahead if you come to a stop, or if there's more than a couple meters between you and the next car. Even busy arterial roads will have to deal with people walking across them if there are large gaps or the traffic is slow or stalled.
I'm struggling to believe London Brigde area and the square mile get 5x less congested than New York. What areas of London and New York are we comparing?
I believe you'll find that the London number you mention is the average density of the Greater London Metropolitan Area.
The City of Westminster has a day-time population of around 1 million people, and its area is around 8 sq miles; (doing casual searching).
This comparison makes no sense. If this was in good faith, you'd compare Manhattan and the square mile or westminster.
It was in good faith. Not knowing much about the UK, I took the largest city to be the densest. Seems I was off.
There are also intermediate options, e.g. pedestrians have the right of way if there isn’t a designated pedestrian crossing within sight.
It would kill the utility of cars though, you could never drive faster than maybe 30 miles per hour or you would constantly run people over.
Pedestrians are more nimble than cars, so it kind of makes sense that cars have the right of way. As far as I know, large container ships have right of way over small vessels for the same reason.
>It would kill the utility of cars though, you could never drive faster than maybe 30 miles per hour
That sounds lovely. I would live in that city.
That city is London - well, to an extent. The majority of London roads have a 20mph limit.
A lot of European cities are also 30kmph in residential/central areas, with even 20kmph limits in pedestrianised areas.
This speed limit, or lower, is pretty common in major European cities. Helps divert investment to things more beneficial to society than individual car ownership, improves transit, cleans up cities, makes for great public spaces.
Yes, I was saying that 30 miles would have to be the limit on every street though, in cities you would probably have to do 10 if everyone could step onto the street at every moment.
We don't need to guess at probabilities.
We can look at the data. Aactual cities where jaywalking isn't a crime; they do not set the speed limit at 10, and it all seems to work fine.
But just because jaywalking isn’t a crime doesn’t mean pedestrians have right of way. Is that the case anywhere? I thought that was the proposal, which is much different than allowing people to cross everywhere, after looking out that there’s no car coming.
reedf1 wrote:
> You could easily imagine a world where pedestrians have the right of way on the streets, and cars "request access to the road" in a similar way that pedestrians do.
Pedestrians have quite broad right of way in the UK - you can't step into moving traffic and expect them to slam on the brakes, but you will see people crossing anywhere and everywhere at any time:
https://www.thewindscreenco.co.uk/help-advice/highway-code-2...
> utility of cars
Using the right tools at the right place is part of it: cars are useful for some trips, less for others. Trying to solve every transportation problem with a unique solution was IMHO the original sin of this.
> Pedestrians are more nimble
Think kids going to school and elderlies. Having something that work for them requires either putting the burden on cars or removing cars from the picture. One costs a lot more than the other, and in the case you want to keep cars in cities the former is probably more attractive than the latter.
> you could never drive faster than maybe 30 miles per hour or you would constantly run people over.
Wait, when are you driving faster than that in a city anyway? City roads here are mostly restricted to 30kph; travel times didn't significantly increase when this was imposed a while back.
It's NYC, you're not driving over 30 anyway.
>?It would kill the utility of cars though, you could never drive faster than maybe 30 miles per hour or you would constantly run people over.
In NYC, the speed limit is 25 miles per hour. What's more, there are plans to reduce that to 20mph in a bunch of places.
Moral: Don't drive in NYC.
Have you ever driven through a downtown urban area? You can't go more than 30mph anyway, even if you wanted to. There is simply too much connections, turns, etc.
And yet, I still disagree that pedestrians should be able to just enter the road willy-nilly. Crosswalks are there for safety because it sets the same expectations for everyone using the road, drivers included, thus creating order and flow that is generally reliable.
This is also the same problem I have with cyclists that think they should be allowed to ride against traffic, ignore stop signs, etc. By not moving with the expected flow, they endanger themselves and creat problems. When I am making a right hand turn, for example, and a cyclist has decided to ride against traffic, I am not compelled to look to my right as I am timing my turn because I am not expecting traffic to be there since a right turn has you crossing zero lanes of traffic and merging with on-coning that would be on your left.
I don't really like our car-centric roads in the US at all, but rules are in place for a reason.
> I am not compelled to look to my right as I am timing my turn because I am not expecting traffic to be there since a right turn has you crossing zero lanes of traffic and merging with on-coning that would be on your left.
Except you may have just passed a cyclist without leaving enough time to turn because you barely registered their presence and are now going to cut them off. Or you stopped at an intersection and they approached on the right because that is where they are supposed to stay by law and you didn't check your blind spot before you started. The first situation can happen with cars where you pass a slow moving car just before an intersection and immediately slow down to turn right, merging back into the lane and cutting off the car. If you have driven any amount of time at all, I am sure you have seen that annoying scenario. The second situation doesn't typically happen with cars because of how right turn lanes are constructed but can (unlawfully) occur when someone (typically a tourist) was in the straight going lane but realized they wanted or needed to turn right.
Dedicated bicycle lanes are meant to make it clear that you are indeed crossing traffic when you turn right because bicycles as slow moving traffic are intended to stay in that area as an exceptional case.
I should clarify that when dedicated bike lanes are present, I absolutely look for cyclists in both directions. Again, setting expectations is important. It's also why we use turn signals.
My reference to cyclists goinh the wrong way takes place in the suburbs where I have lived most, and bikes are not exactly common. On a four lane highway with a speed limit of 55mph, multiple driveways, etc (Not Just Bikes calls them Stroads), a cyclist moving against traffic on a narrow shoulder is not expected. We can preach all day about "paying attention" but we have created a situation that demands high levels of attention from all, but cyclists feel they are exempt from the rules of traffic, making the situation worse in some immature act of defiance.
I like my bike. I ride it as often as possible and travel to places specifically because they have good biking infrastructure. But when I am in a place where therd is none, I ride with traffic, use my hand signals, and assume drivers cannot see me because they have a hundred other things they need to pay attention to, so I put effort into making myself visible and communicating intent.
It's not that hard.
> but cyclists feel they are exempt from the rules of traffic, making the situation worse in some immature act of defiance.
The vast majority of drivers are continuously violating laws. On top of the continuous speeding violation (+10-15 is surely ok?) add the occasional roll through, failures to yield, failure to use a turn signal, speeding in school zones, passing without sufficient distance, running reds, double parking, etc and the police pretty much always can pull over any given automobile driver. This fact is well known: the default state of a driver is one of rule breaking.
Primary attribution fallacy is the contextualization of our own errors or rule violations while attributing those of strangers to character flaws (immature, defiant). You pass drivers doing all of the above things every day, but it is the cyclists you notice because they are different and the other drivers are surely doing the same as you. But you understand the context in which you violate laws or make mistakes.
It is not that hard to understand that everyone is human.
> Except you may have just passed a cyclist without leaving enough time to turn because you barely registered their presence and are now going to cut them off.
> and you didn't check your blind spot before you started.
No amount of legislation or changes in rules will protect from people who aren't paying attention. These changes don't have an impact immediately, but the only way to make them is to do them at one point or another. The people learning to drive in NY now will know that things are different, and in 10-15 years the behaviour will change.
Because it's not 'asking' if it's a law. If you're legislating that people can't just walk across a deserted street where it's most convenient then you have a broken law. Legislate against disrupting traffic if you really need to. Not disrupting traffic? What's the problem?
If the street is empty then it's easy to recognize that. However what will the rule be if there is a car, but far away, or not that far away. It's a slippery slope with a 2 ton SUV driving at 50mph and a person "interpreting" that it's not disrupting it.
Ambiguity will be the problem and it is solved by the rule of "not crossing at all". The lesser of 2 evils.
> It's a slippery slope with a 2 ton SUV driving at 50mph and a person "interpreting" that it's not disrupting it.
Maybe the problem here is that a 2 ton SUV shouldn't be driven at 50mph when pedestrians are anywhere near. I always find it interesting how the ones advocating for the absolute freedom of owning and driving an SUV everywhere, to carry 70kg of human flesh, are usually also the ones asking for the restriction of the freedom of other users of the public space.
The problem is not how big is the car or any other subject. The problem with any rule that is badly formulated is the ambiguity it creates. In this instance this bad definition can lead to very bad consequences.
Bad rules = ambiguous rules and need for interpretation and that leads to many bad consequences.
There are many countries in the world that have such "ambiguous" rules wrt pedestrian crossings. Much of Europe, for example.
Can you cite any specific examples of this being a problem anywhere in practice?
There is no ambiguity here, if you don't have the right of way you will be liable if something happens. But "something happening" will likely have to be more than just disrupting an SUV driver going at 50mph by making him slow down a bit.
I think jaywalking being technically illegal allows law enforcement to use an expedient to arrest people they want to arrest for other reasons, for example, there is no law that would allow to arrest you for "walking while black", but crossing the street at an unauthorized point? Yeah that works
See a judge doing the right thing:
https://youtu.be/0PUgbArgXJA?si=9-8viC2MM-mIGEFe
We don't need a society that relies only on judges doing the right thing. We need better laws
Cars are already supposed to slow down if they see pedestrians on the street, even if the pedestrian is crossing illegally, same as they are supposed to avoid drivers doing illegal things. It's the police's job to punish illegal behavior, not drivers'.
So, in the situation you describe, the solution is clear: the car has to slow down, and any police officer is supposed to notice that the car had to slow down and issue some citation to the pedestrian for not respecting the right of way. This is exactly how all traffic violations work: if some car is not yielding to you, you don't drive into them, you break to avoid the accident, and hope that the police sees this and issues a citation to the other driver.
Rules for people are not the same as a code for a compiler. You may enact a rule, but people are not guaranteed they will comply with it either because they will brake it or they will forget/ignore it.
If a bad rule is enacted and it kills 100 people per year more, will enforcement of the rule bring back those 100 people?
Rules should take into account the stupid things people will do and that in real life you won't get 100% compliance and enforcement won't get you to 100%. (many real life examples)
Sure, the results have to be measured and the rules adjusted. But a possible result of this rule is exactly that it will make drivers drive more slowly in general, for fear of hitting pedestrians, which would overall reduce accidents, even outside of pedestrian deaths.
> will enforcement of the rule bring back those 100 people?
Yes. Enforcement of the rules, when done properly, does save lives. We have psychology studies that show that judgement/punishment needs to be swift/certain. When that is the case, human behavior is altered (sometimes permanently).
> and that in real life you won't get 100% compliance and enforcement
No one needs 100% compliance. We need something up near 98% or 99%, which is achievable.
Crosswalks are typically at intersections - this is NOT where pedestrians are most protected. Often, it's safer to cross in the middle of the road, particularly if it's one way.
When you're at an intersection, there's cars coming from many directions. In addition, from the crosswalks I've seen they don't even stop turning cars - the turning cars have to be looking and stop themselves.
Lots of ways. Some of them are detailed here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-16/jaywalkin...
I’m guessing they meant most frequently broken.
But as someone who lives in a country that has never had that law, I’m pretty sure it’s unnecessary.
Making the pedestrians go the long way prioritises driving, which leads to more people driving, which leads to more traffic, fumes, etc.
But most broken seems like a stretch!
The average person probably violates jaywalking laws multiple times a day. What other law do most people break constantly as just part of day to day life?
I imagine most Americans violate speeding and other vehicles moving laws far more often than jaywalking. I imagine the majority of Americans haven't actually crossed a street as a pedestrian in the last week.
Why would they? They drive from their home to their job to the parking lot of the grocery store to the drive through pickup line at school for their kids.
I'm one of the more transit/pedestrian/bike people in the group I routinely hang out with and I haven't actually crossed the street as a pedestrian in a few days.
Even if you always drive, parking in large cities is often limited enough that you have to walk a fair bit from where you can find a spot to where you actually need to go.
You might overly be estimating your ideas of what is "urban".
Tons of Americans never have to deal with crossing a street for their parking. They're not parking at some lot around the block and walking. It's all just a sea of pavement. City codes mandate each big box store has dozens of spots per shelf in the store. This on its face seems like a gross overstatement but looking at maps shows the truth of the seas of empty lots surrounding big box stores.
I live in an American town with <8k residents, so I know exactly what you mean.
But many large cities don't have such city codes and have very limited parking as a result, even around large stores etc; especially not in downtown. Which, even if you don't live or work there, is still somewhere people sometimes have to go to for other reasons, from visiting a fancy restaurant to jury summons.
Anti-miscegenation laws were a common place one for some time .. arguably some alive today are still a living crime.
Trevor Noah titled a book Born a Crime in reference to his birth in South Africa, similar laws remained in force in many US states until 1967 which means a number of people walking about the US today have an existence that was a crime.
Other posters are right, I meant 'most frequently broken'.
It still worked the other way as well.
Come to think of it, laws that are most frequently broken by the general public are also probably deeply broken in their concept or the worldview they were based on.
For instance speeding laws, while making sense on paper, are completely inadequate for the thing they want to improve. Structural changes to either the roads or other infra, the cars, or more deterring power than a slap on the wrist are probably needed in the places where they're routinely broken by normal people.
Because the pedestrians and roads were there before cars.
Criminalizing the behavior was regulatory capture by Big Auto.
It being enforced by police from Connecticut who treat NYC’s minorities like a VR simulation was broken.
Strong recommendations and pointing out the loss in civil suits would have always been totally fine.
Broken as in people not respecting it I assume.
Not broken in terms of design and intent, but broken by people all the time. As in "I broke the law, and the law won"
Not policing is the latest SF export coming worldwide.
It was de-facto legal to begin with. The only people who were ever hurt by this law were the people who insisted on abiding by the law beyond the point of absurdity.
I appreciate that this is one less crime the average person commits every day that a capricious enforcer can make a big deal of but the flip side is that this reduces the competitive advantage of not being law abiding to the point of absurdity and your own detriment.
Seems to me like greater damage was being done to the people getting stopped and searched on the pretext of jaywalking. From the article:
> The Legal Aid Society called the legislation long overdue. The non-profit organization, which provides free legal representation to New Yorkers who cannot afford a lawyer, said police for decades have used the violation as a pretext to stop, question and frisk residents – especially those of color.