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Automakers invented the crime of jaywalking (2015)

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Re: Automakers invented the crime of jaywalking (2015)

#161

Post by doctorpangloss »

cjensen wrote: post #10

The Library of Congress has a great film taken from the front of a cable car in pre-fire San Francisco [1]. It's absolutely terrifying to see how unsafe the streets were. It wasn't just cars either: horse-drawn carts dart in and out of traffic just as cars did, pedestrians cross at-will in front of all vehicles, and at one points kids mess about jumping on the back of vehicles. It's obvious major regulation was neede…

> It's absolutely terrifying... Pretend cars didn't exist on that street for a moment

You can easily experience the scenario you envision, practically average 1905 San Francisco roads, by walking or biking through JFK street in Golden Gate Park, which is closed to all vehicles but food trucks and shuttles.

It's so crazy fucking nice, fun and safe so I have no idea what you're talking about.

Re: Automakers invented the crime of jaywalking (2015)

#162

Post by freedrock87 »

trothamel wrote: post #79

Note that like most laws, Jaywalking laws tend to make more sense when you read them. Here's the law in New York: https://law.justia.com/codes/new-york/2015/vat/title-7/artic... 1152. Crossing at other than crosswalks. (a) Every pedestrian crossing a roadway at any point other than within a marked crosswalk or within an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection shall yield the right of way to all vehicles upon the roadwa…

Not sure where the law says "crossing without checking" is illegal. It clearly states that crossing outside certain defined areas areas is illegal. That alone is massive issue since crossing area are far and few in between especially if you are trying to cross midblock in NYC. So much for "making more sense when you read them"

Re: Automakers invented the crime of jaywalking (2015)

#163

Post by youngtaff »

zelon88 wrote: post #135
UtopiaPunk wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed that people who don't walk or bike usually don't have frame of reference of what cars are capable of, and usually don't understand all of the simultaneous requirements that must be fulfilled by pedestrians and cyclists. So you get drivers who don't understand that they need to look both ways even on a one way street, because someone might be using the sidewalk, drivers that don't pay attention to walk si…

I understand the reasoning behind wanting this to be some kind of David v Goliath story, but this is the real world. Cars don't stop as fast as feet. Everybody is a pedestrian sometimes but not everyone is a driver. You can say accountability belongs to one or the other but one is gonna walk away and one isn't. Personal responsibility should take precedent over right of way. You cannot regulate or control others, but…

Most people who drive also walk… so it’s a completely facetious argument that motorists pay so they should have priority

Re: Automakers invented the crime of jaywalking (2015)

#164

Post by WinstonSmith84 »

jcynix wrote: post #11

If you cross the street "near" a red traffic light, that costs you 5€ in Germany. If you admit that you did it intentionally, the ticket price doubles. Happened to my wife some years ago when walking to a bus stop on the other side of the street. How did the cop know that it was intentional? She remarked that there was no car in sight, neither left nor right, on a straight road in town. Oh, and what's the definition…

hm interesting.. I didn't know that it was illegal. I've been living many years in Germany and always jaywalked, or more precisely always looked at the car traffic typically ignoring the traffic lights (as it's common everywhere else in the world outside EU+US).

And I've never been fined, while I'm sure it already happened the police had seen me. But I will admit that Germans are happily waiting while there is no car in sight - until they see people crossing by red, and then they join ...

Re: Automakers invented the crime of jaywalking (2015)

#165

Post by diogenes4 »

cjensen wrote: post #10

The Library of Congress has a great film taken from the front of a cable car in pre-fire San Francisco [1]. It's absolutely terrifying to see how unsafe the streets were. It wasn't just cars either: horse-drawn carts dart in and out of traffic just as cars did, pedestrians cross at-will in front of all vehicles, and at one points kids mess about jumping on the back of vehicles. It's obvious major regulation was neede…

> It's obvious major regulation was needed, and not just for pedestrians.

Wait why would your impulse be to regulate pedestrians at all? The street doesn't even seem that dangerous without high-speed vehicles.

Re: Automakers invented the crime of jaywalking (2015)

#166

Post by dm319 »

jcynix wrote: post #11

If you cross the street "near" a red traffic light, that costs you 5€ in Germany. If you admit that you did it intentionally, the ticket price doubles. Happened to my wife some years ago when walking to a bus stop on the other side of the street. How did the cop know that it was intentional? She remarked that there was no car in sight, neither left nor right, on a straight road in town. Oh, and what's the definition…

The law in the UK has just changed to explicitly give priority to pedestrians already crossing the road, particularly in the context of a car turning off a main road and finding pedestrians crossing the road.

Re: Automakers invented the crime of jaywalking (2015)

#167

Post by lelanthran »

digital-cygnet wrote: post #147
trothamel wrote: post #79

Note that like most laws, Jaywalking laws tend to make more sense when you read them. Here's the law in New York: https://law.justia.com/codes/new-york/2015/vat/title-7/artic... 1152. Crossing at other than crosswalks. (a) Every pedestrian crossing a roadway at any point other than within a marked crosswalk or within an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection shall yield the right of way to all vehicles upon the roadwa…

I think you've misunderstood the law you've quoted. It's not about "crossing without checking", it's about the pedestrian "yield[ing] the right of way to all vehicles". It's hard to imagine from a modern perspective, but until laws like this were passed roads were not, as today, universally perceived as places for cars to drive. In cities in much of the developing world the pre-jaywalking regime remains: road users w…

> where one car trying to go from point A to point C is effectively given total preference over all the people trying to live their lives (and cross the street) in B.

That's a very simplistic view - it was never questionable and no one was "given preference". It was simply a practical decision in order to allow cars to use the road.

The car took a few seconds to stop from even a pedestrians walking speed. The pedestrian takes a few hundred milliseconds to stop from a walking speed.

Giving the pedestrian the right of way would simply result in a lot of dead pedestrians.

It's a no-brainer that the party to yield should be the one who can yield.

The physics didn't allow your preference, and that turned out to be an incredibly good thing as the automobile was one of the biggest drivers of trade and industry the world over.

We all benefited, yourself included, from having those early laws on the books.

Re: Automakers invented the crime of jaywalking (2015)

#168

Post by eesmith »

zelon88 wrote: post #135
UtopiaPunk wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed that people who don't walk or bike usually don't have frame of reference of what cars are capable of, and usually don't understand all of the simultaneous requirements that must be fulfilled by pedestrians and cyclists. So you get drivers who don't understand that they need to look both ways even on a one way street, because someone might be using the sidewalk, drivers that don't pay attention to walk si…

I understand the reasoning behind wanting this to be some kind of David v Goliath story, but this is the real world. Cars don't stop as fast as feet. Everybody is a pedestrian sometimes but not everyone is a driver. You can say accountability belongs to one or the other but one is gonna walk away and one isn't. Personal responsibility should take precedent over right of way. You cannot regulate or control others, but…

> You cannot regulate or control others, but you can regulate yourself.

However, we are subject to the regulations of the people who came before us, who set up the street and road system to prioritize car transit over other forms of transit.

You can't simply ignore that existing system of controls away and claim the main issues are "personal responsibility" and self-regulation.

Not after over a century of explicit laws that shaped the very way you live and how you judge what is normal.

> They pay for the roads with sales tax, excise tax, gas tax

Those fees pay for only about half of the roads. https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/gasoline-taxes-and-... says:

"Nationwide in 2011, highway user fees and user taxes made up just 50.4 percent of state and local expenses on roads. State and local governments spent $153.0 billion on highway, road, and street expenses but raised only $77.1 billion in user fees and user taxes ($12.7 billion in tolls and user fees, $41.2 billion in fuel taxes, and $23.2 billion in vehicle license taxes).[3] The rest was funded by $30 billion in general state and local revenues and $46 billion in federal aid (approximately $28 billion derived from the federal gasoline tax and $18 billion from general federal revenues or deficit financed)."

For another source, https://pirg.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Who-Pays-for-Roa... says "general taxes paid by all tax-payers cover nearly as much of the cost of building and maintaining highways as the gas tax and other fees paid by drivers".

> Quite literally it is the drivers who pay for the infrastructure used by everyone on the road.

Quite literally they do not.

Re: Automakers invented the crime of jaywalking (2015)

#169

Post by _jal »

mikrl wrote: post #82
trothamel wrote: post #79

Note that like most laws, Jaywalking laws tend to make more sense when you read them. Here's the law in New York: https://law.justia.com/codes/new-york/2015/vat/title-7/artic... 1152. Crossing at other than crosswalks. (a) Every pedestrian crossing a roadway at any point other than within a marked crosswalk or within an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection shall yield the right of way to all vehicles upon the roadwa…

Canada specific, but… Diagonal crossing is a thing in Quebec City at certain intersections which stop the traffic flow in every direction. Otherwise I only ever do it when I cannot see any cars which is fairly common at night in rural areas.

There are a few 4-way stops in San Francisco, mostly in the financial district. One at 4th & Folsom.

In general, I routinely jaywalk here, traffic permitting. If nobody's coming, I just walk. In over 20 years, I've never heard of anyone getting a jaywalking ticket in SF.

Re: Automakers invented the crime of jaywalking (2015)

#170

Post by xormapmap »

sandworm101 wrote: post #83
TacticalCoder wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany always is doing super well in these rankings. Yet 2/3rd of the highways have no speed limit at all. It's of course unsurprising: all cars are driving in the same direction on the highway so head-on collisions on the highways are extremely rare. Also pedestrian deaths on the highway: the number is so minuscule it doesn't even register.

>> head-on collisions on the highways are extremely rare. And they aren't as dangerous as many would think. Cars have done lots to improve such collisions (airbags, crumple zones). A head-on collision between cars is still two relatively lightweight objects. Hit a concrete wall, overpass support, cliff or tree and you are going up against an object that makes a care look like tinfoil. The head-on seems bad, but it is…

In terms of the physics involved, a head-on collision with a similar vehicle traveling at the same speed as you is equivalent to hitting a concrete wall.
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