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Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime

virginiamercury.com

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Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime

#411

Post by ck425 »

umvi wrote: post #322
standardUser wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"commercial centers with speed limits around 45 MPH. I can't imagine how a "commercial center" could have a road with a 45 MPH speed limit. Lowering that to 20 would solve most of the problem.

Here is the commercial center I was referring to and the road across which jaywalkers dangerously dart: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.17947,-77.2383268,3a,75y,359... And here is proof the speed limit is 45: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1826157,-77.2383985,3a,75y,1...

Yeah that's some terrible urban design there. If you're getting that close to an area worth pedestrians it should not be a 45mph limit.

Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime

#412

Post by pertymcpert »

nomel wrote: post #274
CalRobert wrote: post #199

Criminalizing jaywalking wasn't about making it illegal to walk across the street. It was about making it legal to kill people doing so with your car. If you want to kill someone in the US it's de facto legal to do so with your car. Just be sober and say you didn't see them.

As someone that nearly hit someone that walked out from behind a bush, with a chemically fueled disregard for the world, I don't think the rules are so bad. As unpopular as the opinion appears to be here, I don't like the idea of having to dodge humans randomly entering the road. Should we also take down the signals and barriers that prevent cars from crossing train tracks, since they have the similar goal of prevent…

Live in Europe for a few years.

Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime

#413

Post by pdpi »

waterhouse wrote: post #381
tolbish wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you grow up with suburban car culture? How do you know your frame of reference isn't biased?

Did you grow up without it? Are you biased as a result of that? Bias is practically impossible to eliminate here. (You could try to find people who moved from one place to another, and ideally limit it to those whose reason for moving had nothing to do with their preferences... and poll them. I don't know how possible that is. It likely also makes a difference at what age they moved.)

I grew up in a car-centric country with fairly poor public transport, and have since moved to London. Here it’s genuinely faster to take public transport to most places than it is to drive.

I occasionally wish I had a car (say for a weekend getaway) but it’s rare enough that I’m happy to live with rentals for those occasions.

Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime

#414

Post by retsibsi »

umvi wrote: post #102
chrisseaton wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think the default should be that it's your right of way in the car? Why should pedestrians keep out of your way and not cross your path? Why don't we instead say you should keep out of the pedestrians way and not cross their path? Maybe we should reset the expectation that cars own the streets, and make them a guest there, deferring to human beings in the first instance.

> Why do you think the default should be that it's your right of way in the car? a) Because it's the law, b) because there's a power dynamic. I can accidentally kill a pedestrian, a pedestrian can't accidentally kill me unless they throw a brick off an overpass. > Why should pedestrians keep out of your way and not cross your path? So that they take responsibility for their own safety. > Why don't we instead say you…

> because there's a power dynamic. I can accidentally kill a pedestrian, a pedestrian can't accidentally kill me unless they throw a brick off an overpass.

I think this point supports the other side of the argument. The pedestrian already has a very strong incentive to be careful: they might die otherwise. Of course most car drivers would be horrified to hit a pedestrian, but most care much less about a stranger's safety than their own (and some are complete psychos who won't care unless it materially costs them). So placing the main legal burden on the driver will do more to deter risky behaviour than would placing it on the pedestrian.

Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime

#415

Post by what2build »

AmpsterMan wrote: post #345
what2build wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parking structures are: 1) an eyesore 2) poor use of space in dense urban areas Sure let’s reduce urban housing supply cause suburbanites need to drive into town for a little culture. Bringing the noise, smog, and road rage along! Or build culture out there and bike or walk. Omg. It’s insanely toxic, and the epitome of first world entitlement.

I'd prefer for there to be a more market incentive to build parking garages than a mandate for commercial/offices to have to all have their own parking, or effectively subsidized free street side parking. Think of all the surface area used up by cars parking on the street; pave that over with a sidewalk and allow bars/restaurants to set up shop there. That's what I would like.

I’d prefer for there to be more market incentive to avoid needing as much car travel.

Which is happening organically thanks to the cost of living increases, urbanization putting more people closer to necessity (which we should be expanding into neighborhoods; but austerity for the rubes, bailouts for failed CEOs and boards!), services like Lyft, and teens worried about the planet being sustainable for them in the future thanks to old people deciding it’s ok to just wreck it and die.

Since the 80s the number of teenagers getting their license has fallen off a cliff, from 50-60% possessing one in the early 80s to less than 30% last I saw the numbers.

The only group where possessing a license went up is 60-70 year olds.

Let’s hope we’re on a downward trajectory of forcing the entire species to eat, sleep, and breath toxicity. Though looking at the US’s concern for its neighbors I’m not that hopeful.

Full speed ahead towards the end of the world then. Super metal to ride the rocket into the sun.

Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime

#416

Post by tomxor »

teloli wrote: post #251
twblalock wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were quite a few other factors that led to the decline of streetcars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp... One of the biggest is that people actually like living in suburbs, and they could afford to do so after WWII. The promise of the suburbs is a detached house, with some private outdoor space like a back yard, in a quiet area: essentially what the rich had always preferred and been…

Oh man, am I glad to be European. Walk to the bar, cycle to work, take the tram if it rains. American cities built for cars are just so sad.

I've never heard anyone self identify as "European" before, do you not feel a stronger personal identity to your own country? Or is it a "in the context of HN and the US affect"?

Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime

#417

Post by nobody9999 »

maxmorlocke wrote: post #16
ravenstine wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but why make a specific point about that with jaywalking? Can't that argument be made for just about any crime? Just seems like a useless red herring to make it about race when it doesn't need to be; it's a related but separate issue to whether jaywalking should be a crime in the first place.

Because jaywalking is very frequently used by police to target communities of color. As an example, 90% of the jaywalking citations given in NYC in 2019 were issued to people of color.

>As an example, 90% of the jaywalking citations given in NYC in 2019 were issued to people of color.

Do you have a citation for that? Apparently, another poster did[0] have a citation.

In a three month period 80 people were cited for "illegal crossing" in a city of 8.5 million. I can tell you that at least half of those 8.5 million folks jaywalked in that same period.

I've lived in NYC since 1966 and I've never seen anyone receive a citation for jaywalking.

What's more, "jaywalking" in NYC is generally referred to as "crossing the street."

In the busiest of intersections, it's often useful to wait for the light, but that's no guarantee that the operators of vehicles will yield -- even if the signal is against them.

As such, I generally don't even look at the traffic signals; I watch the traffic coming my way and only cross if it's safe to do so, regardless of the status of the signal.

In fact, crossing at a marked intersection with the signal is no guarantee of not getting struck by an automobile. I'm at least as vigilant when crossing in a crosswalk with the light as when I cross against the light or in the middle of the street.

[0] https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2020/05/07/nypds-racial-bias-in-...

Edit: Added link to answer my own question about citations for jaywalking and added ancillary verbiage as to the rarity of such citations.

Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime

#418

Post by ben_w »

dcolkitt wrote: post #341
teloli wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, am I glad to be European. Walk to the bar, cycle to work, take the tram if it rains. American cities built for cars are just so sad.

Except, the difference is mostly a stereotype that isn't held up by the data. In France, 70% of commuters travel by car and only 3% by cycling.[1] That's less car-centric than America for sure. But Americans have a misguided notion that all Europeans live in quaint pedestrian-friendly town centers that look like Prague or Copenhagen. Mostly because we tend to spend our European tourism in the dense centers of the cap…

France != Paris. Considering only the cities, there is a massive difference between the majority of European cities I’ve visited and all US cities I’ve visited — the worst in Europe is about the equal of the best in America (e.g. Bay Area, NYC), to the extent that the only time I’ve owned a car was a 2-week period when my ex moved out of the country and wanted me to sell hers on her behalf.

My worst pedestrian experience was Salt Lake City, where the footpaths stopped suddenly and without apparent reason in the middle of the residential area I was staying in. I had to backtrack and guess a lot.

Sure, the sudden absence of footpaths can happen in Europe too (I’ve seen it in Λάρνακα, Luxembourg, and Hochstadt, though never to the same extent), but for the most part even tiny villages in Europe have better public transport and pedestrian access than the various American cities I’ve visited.

Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime

#419

Post by memsom »

tomxor wrote: post #416
teloli wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, am I glad to be European. Walk to the bar, cycle to work, take the tram if it rains. American cities built for cars are just so sad.

I've never heard anyone self identify as "European" before, do you not feel a stronger personal identity to your own country? Or is it a "in the context of HN and the US affect"?

It's quite a common thing. I would identify as a European too. UK is about to leave the EU, but UK is still in the European continent. Some of my fellow countrymen are not so sure, but for me, I feel more European than not.

Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime

#420

Post by nobody9999 »

jimbob45 wrote: post #121
LordDragonfang wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that's interesting conjecture, it doesn't bear out in reality in this case. From an article linked elsewhere in this chain[1]: >From Jan. 1 to March 31, the NYPD wrote 80 tickets for illegal crossing — less than one a day in a city of more than eight million people — and only one went to a person identified in police logs as “white.” So unless you think the "lower class" is 98% people of color, it's clear that…

Right but we have no way of knowing how many walkers were blacks, how many black and white walkers actually jaywalked, and how many walkers of each race got let off on warnings. It’s a nice talking point, I’ll grant you, but it won’t hold up to scrutiny on HN.

I hate to break it to you, but in NYC, nearly everyone, regardless of ethnicity or melanin content, jaywalks.

In fact, we don't call it jaywalking, we call it "crossing the street."

And the fact that out of 8.5 million people, only 80 were cited and 79 of those were people of color (and all 80 male), it's not only obvious that such citations are motivated by something other than "routine" law enforcement, but it's clearly just a trumped up charge to stop someone they wanted to stop anyway.

Spend an hour in midtown Manhattan and you'll see that's absolutely the case.

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