I guess we're followers this time, not leaders, but as of 2023 jaywalking will no longer be against the law in California—as long as you do it safely:
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday signed the “Freedom to Walk” bill sponsored by Assemblyman Phil Ting (D-San Francisco). The law, which goes into effect on Jan. 1, comes years after activists have argued that jaywalking rules disproportionately affect marginalized and low-income residents.
Under the new law, pedestrians would be able to legally cross the street outside of designated intersections without the threat of a hefty citation “unless a reasonably careful person would realize there is an immediate danger of collision with a moving vehicle or other device moving exclusively by human power.”
It sounds like woke activists were mostly responsible for this burst of common sense, not pedestrian interest groups. So let me be the first to say thanks to California's marginalized and low-income folks—and the cops who hassle them—for providing the excuse to pass this law.
My local paper keeps getting this wrong too: this law doesn't make jaywalking legal; it only directs police departments not to enforce it. A key distinction: if you jaywalk and get hit by a car, it's presumptively (at least partly) your fault since you were doing something illegal. But we won't bother to ticket people for it.
Some seat belt laws follow the same logic: it's to establish a responsibility for one's own safety, rather than generate ticket revenue.
With “reasonably careful” being in the eyes of whom?
Derek Chauvin & Stacy Koon.
Freedom to Walk Act is pure Bush-43 era Luntzian kitchen pecking.
A thousand Democrat chefs in a thousand hearths finally alit on a good piece of rhetoric.
I observed long ago that the middle of the street is probably the safest place to cross, if you're on foot. At the corners, you need to look out for traffic turning from several directions. In the middle of the street if there's a median, you can cross one set of lanes at a time.
Admittedly, the corners often have crossing lights, which provide some benefits.
Perhaps but traffic is about population level safety and flow.
Crossing in the middle of a block does not work for people walking multiple blocks.
Allowing crossing everywhere is obviously going to be more dangerous and to slow down flow.
Corners and marked crossings seems a reasonable compromise.
Level of enforcement and penalties for violation can be debated by reasonable people.
Yes, there are always trade-offs.
Praise be to the New Abolitionists for bravely fighting the Most Important battles of the century. Just don’t step into the bike lanes.
Honest question: does CA still have the provision that vehicles must stop whenever a pedestrian's foot hits the roadway? In these northeastern climes, where we dodge and weave among moving cars like Ratso Rizzo, reports of this automotive behavior were a source of wonderment akin to the Arabian Nights.
Er, *your* part of the northeastern climes maybe. Here in VT, there's no law, drivers just stop and let pedestrians cross when they step to the curb.
I think it's less a question of Northeast and non-Northeast than it is rural versus urban.
I think it's less a question of Northeast and non-Northeast than it is rural versus urban.
Or what community you're in. I remember always being very careful driving through Belmont, MA. There's a crosswalk or two in the center of town, and rumor had it the police were just waiting to pull over motorists who failed to notice a pedestrian had merely placed one foot on the crossing.
Heh. In Los Alamos, vehicles will stop for you only if you are in a marked crosswalk. Otherwise, you'll just need to dodge or run as they bear down on you at full speed.
When this east coast city boy first arrived in suburban California he nearly walked into cars because they would stop when he was timing to go behind them…
Great. Here's hoping when I hit someone in the middle of the street, wearing black, in the dark on the highway that runs through my town, I'm not arrested or sued for it. Something tells me that I will be.
I only know two people that have ever gotten jaywalking tickets. One was an extremely unhappy white guy and the other was an Indian fellow that continued across the street when a cop told him to turn around when he was half way across. His reasoning was that since he was in the middle, he was just as close to the side he wanted to get to anyway. I always thought that his logic was unassailable. Anyway, he fought it in court and won. His defense was that he was a good person, had a job, and paid taxes, which I always found funny as he readily admitted to the jaywalking.
Waymo be there for you.
A reasonably careful person? I suppose they jaywalk only when no drivers are nearby to see them. But there are a lot of idiot jaywalkers who seem intent on running into the street at the most dangerous moment. The people I see doing this are almost always male, which probably accounts for the much higher pedestrian fatality rate for men. Of course, the people who are so disdainful of rules and safety that they would rush into heavy traffic are probably not at all influenced by the legality of it anyway.
Drivers should be able to run through red lights and stop signs unless a reasonably careful person would realize there is an immediate danger of collision with a moving vehicle. Are we all on board with that?
How do jaywalking rules disproportionately affect marginalized and low-income residents?
Is that the fines are more onerous for people of lesser means? (something that should be addressed)
or
That they are more likely to jaywalk?
When I visited the east coast and England I was appalled at the lack of adherence to traffic rules. California used to be paramount in that its citizens were "road and rules savvy" (both drivers and pedestrians). It was a point of pride for the state (especially compared to the maniacs in Boston).
Jaywalking is like comfort animals. Merited in some cases but mostly used by selfish people who don't give a damn about inconveniencing others.
Kevin's snarky caption for his picture of a footrace and an elderly person stopped on the zebra crossing is:
In Paris, jaywalking takes place on such an epic scale that elderly residents are barely able to use legal crosswalks.
Ha ha.
"How do jaywalking rules disproportionately affect marginalized and low-income residents?"
Maybe they're more likely to get ticketed than pink-skinned folk who are doing the same thing?
One thing I think about a lot as I'm driving and (often jay-) walking around is that I'm a lot less likely than many other people to have the local constabulary grab me and throw me to the ground with a knee in my back or on my neck. I might be a bit more law-observant than average, but mostly it's what I think of as "old white-guy privilege."
Bingo.
Well, geez. We should probably just rid of all the laws then. We don't want to run the risk of blacks being held accountable for breaking the laws.
Modern conservatism relies on two things: an ingroup protected, but not bound, by law, & an outgroup bound, but not protected, by law.
This strikes me as a strange way to read what I was writing about. First, there are other groups of people in this world than the one you singled out, even in CA, who aren't "white." Then, there could be something about enforcing laws on "white" people who violate them in a similar proportion as it's enforced on others (assuming it isn't being done that way now, which I admit I am assuming).
And in the bigger picture, given that police-initiated encounters with people who aren't "white" or who aren't visibly at least comfortable economically have shown some tendency to end badly, it might be a rational thing if there were fewer situations that obligated officers to initiate these encounters with fellow citizens and others in the public. That could also free up officers occupied with writing up jaywalkers to respond to more serious threats to safety and/or property.
BTW, these aren't just idle thoughts for me. One noticeable thing in videos of police approaching people is that they tend to say a bunch of contradictory things and expect instant compliance. I don't hear very well and would always be worried about some hothead deciding I wasn't reacting fast enough and needed to be subdued on the spot.
The same "old white-guy privilege" that makes it unlikely I'd be stopped in the first place also limits how likely that kind of event would be. But it didn't protect the older white lady in Colorado a couple of years ago, suffering with dementia, from getting injured over being "uncooperative," so it isn't an infallible shield.
Where do you find these videos?
Video of the Colorado event is included with the Reuters story about the city of Loveland's settlement with the woman's family . You can also find video of a much more egregious event in Alabama linked through this story and maybe from the wikipedia article on it (the guy was partially paralyzed; he was visiting his son and didn't understand English that well).
Over the past several years dash-cam and surveillance videos have been shown of traffic stops and other encounters in, I think, LA, MD, SC and other places that have ended badly, and this pattern has been notable in most or all of them. I'm sure google would turn up many of these events if you gave it a try; they tend to be very memorable for me because of my own concerns so I don't often go looking for them.
Links seem to have been stripped out. Google "colorado city to pay" as a literal for the first one, "grandfather visiting alabama paralyzed" as a normal search for the second.
Because they're much more likely to be on foot, instead of comfortably ensconced in cars? You can't "jaywalk" unless you're walking (or running, skipping, etc.)
> Are we all on board with that?
No, and the reason why is that cars run over pedestrians, not the other way around. Most people over the age of 2 have generally figured out the thing about big things having more mass as well as that other thing about hard things win over squishy things.
> How do jaywalking rules disproportionately affect marginalized and low-income residents?
Well, you see, there's this thing called money. One usually must exchange a substantial amount of it if one wishes to own a car. Low-income people, as the monicker might suggest, usually have less money than those with more income. As a result, they own fewer cars. And as a result of _that_, they walk more. And walking is how you become a pedestrian.
See how that works? And while I'm asking questions... Do you just wait around looking for opportunities to miss the point, or take them as they present themselves?
When we were teens my friend Larry and I (both white) were ticketed for jaywalking as we crossed the street in downtown Dallas in our rush to see "Goldfinger." This did not increase our respect for law enforcement. $10 each.
I have to say, being a pedestrian in California* is beyond frustrating. People waiting for the walk signal to light up to cross when there are no visible cars in either direction (for many blocks) because...why? I've generated nasty looks when I've refuse to bow to these inane laws (and yes, I've put myself at risk of getting cited) but, it's just nuts to wait for no reason.
In my multiple decades in Boston, I'd literally never even heard of someone getting cited for jaywalking, much less known one personally, much less received a citation myself.
*Maybe things are looser in SoCal for all I know. But in the Bay Area places I've spent the bulk of my time in (mostly San Mateo/Santa Clara), folks sure are obedient about waiting for the "walk" signal to cross.
Not a lover of small children, I see.
"People waiting for the walk signal to light up to cross when there are no visible cars in either direction "
Your thoughts on people who sit at red lights when there are no visible cars coming?
Is it 'just nuts to wait for no reason'?
Your thoughts on people who sit at red lights when there are no visible cars coming?
Your thoughts on visiting most cities just about anywhere on earth outside certain parts of the United States?
As radical as this sounds, on vast swaths of our planet, pedestrians are trusted to look both ways and, uh, cross when clear, without this becoming a matter for the police. And, rather obviously, there are reasons for this relaxed attitude absent when it comes to pedestrians that very much aren't absent when it comes to cars waiting at red light.
(Note to self: is it a common belief that a person on foot crossing the street when it's safe to do so is the same as a motorist running a red light?)
Well, you gold-pressed latinum points for a certain kind of rampant dishonesty. I guess.
Remember, folks, that when you obey traffic regulations you're not just following the law; you're modeling good public behaviour for our younger and more impressionable citizens.
Like + 10!
+1
Good on Newsom. If he's not careful, people might start talking up his White House chances.
Next up, weaponizing jaywalking to bring traffic to a standstill as protest against, well, just about anything.
Ah, changing the law, or at least the interpretation of it. Wake me up when the infrastructure in the US is safe enough for pedestrians that it children will be able to walk to school
What's the definition of "safe?" As long as you don't get run down?
I just wish the folks around here would stop using the center of the street as their damn sidewalk.