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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

#301

Post by VRay »

pdonis wrote: post #178
putnambr wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you do cross that way and get hit by a car, the presumption is that you were at fault--whereas, if you get hit by a car while you are in the marked crosswalks, the presumption is that the driver of the car was at fault I'd be wary of this. A pedestrian's position in the street is hard to prove (and defend) when they're hit by a vehicle. Say someone gets hit and is thrown twenty feet when crossing at an unmarked…

> A pedestrian's position in the street is hard to prove (and defend) when they're hit by a vehicle. This is true today, so how do such cases get handled today in jurisdictions where jaywalking is illegal? Note that I am not proposing changing the current presumptions of guilt if there has been an accident, only the rule about what cops are allowed to write a ticket for if there hasn't been an accident. > You could a…

if a car hits a pedestrian, the car doesn't get destroyed but the pedestrian's body does

other than that, sure, you're right

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

#302

Post by pdonis »

VRay wrote: post #301
pdonis wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A pedestrian's position in the street is hard to prove (and defend) when they're hit by a vehicle. This is true today, so how do such cases get handled today in jurisdictions where jaywalking is illegal? Note that I am not proposing changing the current presumptions of guilt if there has been an accident, only the rule about what cops are allowed to write a ticket for if there hasn't been an accident. > You could a…

if a car hits a pedestrian, the car doesn't get destroyed but the pedestrian's body does other than that, sure, you're right

> if a car hits a pedestrian, the car doesn't get destroyed but the pedestrian's body does

See my response to mulman downthread where I talk about a large disparity in costs.

Also, as I said before, this is the case today, under our current legal regime where jaywalking is illegal. So how are cases like this handled today?

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

#303

Post by pdonis »

ck425 wrote: post #244
pdonis wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If jaywalking was legal, the sacrifice is that we'd have to drive slower to watch for pedestrians. There is a middle ground: the law could say that, while you can't get a ticket just for crossing a street outside the marked crosswalks, if you do cross that way and get hit by a car, the presumption is that you were at fault--whereas, if you get hit by a car while you are in the marked crosswalks, the presumption is…

In the UK we have a good setup where is a pedestrian walks out it's on the driver to be careful and try stop, therefore the presumption is normally that the driver (or larger vehicle generally so lorry>car>cyclist>pedestrian) is at fault in most cases. It sounds chaotic but in practicality it's balanced by the fact most people don't want to be hit by a car and we teach kids from a young age how to cross roads.

There are still marked crosswalks in the UK, though, correct? (The only part of the UK I've been in is London and that was years ago, but I remember seeing marked crosswalks and people generally keeping to them when crossing and obeying traffic signals.) Does the presumption that the driver is at fault depend on whether the pedestrian is in a crosswalk or not?

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

#304

Post by iso947 »

twblalock wrote: post #195
ericmcer wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Car free cities are super obtainable but seem like a total impossibility. We will never trade safety, health and solitude for convenience.

I don't think car-free cities are easily obtainable. I can't think of one that currently exists. Even cities with world-class mass transit, e.g. Tokyo and London, are full of cars, and taxis are still a better option for some trips -- even though there are also surface trains, subways, and buses to choose from. In those places, step 1 has already been solved: convince the population that mass transit is desirable and…

Venice and Siena come to mind

Anecdotally last time I was in central London I counted the vehicles going past parliament. About 1 in 10 was an unmarked car, the rest were commercial vehicles or taxis

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

#305

Post by therealx »

culopatin wrote: post #239
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Police in small towns are mostly fine and don't care about petty stuff because they have meth labs and whatnot to give them perspective. Police in wealthy suburbs, rural retirement small towns, tourist destinations and college towns are mostly not fine because they don't have much Real Crime(TM) to give them perspective.

Yeah right. Except that if you drive around the country enough you’ll find out that speed trap towns are usually small towns with nothing better to do. One pharmacy, a subway, 2 gas stations but 5 cruisers waiting for you to go over the silly 30mph limit imposed right after the crest of a bridge.

What is WITH that subway? Military bases, small towns, everywhere.

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

#306

Post by reportingsjr »

leetcrew wrote: post #269
reportingsjr wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That almost exclusively refers to largely limiting personal cars, it doesn't include service vehicles, delivery automobiles, etc (so construction vans and trucks, ambulances, etc are still allowed). Much more info on the car free city center concept at this wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carfree_city

tbh I don't actually disagree with banning personal cars in very dense city centers. but I have to say it is a special sort of linguistic backflip to not call this position "anti-automobile".

Why try to tribalize this? I explained how a lot of people feel, and that there is a bit of a spectrum in what people want.

It really feels like you're trying to make this an "us vs. them" situation negatively, rather than understanding that it's people wanting safer, healthier, more enjoyable places to live by means of reducing car dependence.

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

#308

Post by woodruffw »

frickenhamster wrote: post #276
woodruffw wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it possible that "people of color" account for 90% of the total people who jaywalked in NYC in 2019? No. I cannot say this in strong enough terms: every single person in NYC jaywalks. Jaywalk ticketing is part of a longstanding policy of the NYPD, which is to use any occasion that presents itself to frisk people they deem "suspicious." The NYPD's definition of "suspicious," in turn, looks a lot like a colorwheel…

There's different levels of jaywalking. There's walking across the streets when there's no car and everyone is doing it. And then there's the crazies who walk across open traffic on a green light where there are cars speeding along causing accidents. A large percent of the homeless and drug addicts in cities are minorities.

> A large percent of the homeless and drug addicts in cities are minorities.

I'm sorry, but what exactly are we supposed to derive from this claim? That unprompted police frisking under the pretense of jaywalking is acceptable so long as the jaywalker is a member of a vulnerable class?

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

#309

Post by dls2016 »

dang wrote: post #191
dls2016 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm being sincere. My research indicates both problems cause roughly $40 billion/year in damage to the economy. It's not my fault that most people posting here don't see the impact of wage theft and/or the impact of tangling shoplifters in the criminal justice system. Your median wage thief probably steals way more than the median shoplifter.

Flamebait means a comment is likely to provoke a flamewar. This doesn't vary with sincerity, but rather with substantiveness and flammability. Those are the variables you need to modulate. We have to moderate effects (or likely effects), not intent. Effects are observable while intent often isn't, and of course it's effects which actually make a difference on the site, whether intended or not. Intent doesn't communic…

word

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

#310

Post by iso947 »

garmaine wrote: post #299
ck425 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When an American friend explained it to me at uni I honestly thought they were trying to trick. It's just such an absurd concept, like how does anyone walk anywhere? Then I realised they don't.

I've been to business hotels in the USA in my travels that literally don't have pedestrian access. There's a road without a pedestrian sidewalk up to the front of the hotel, and that's it. You CANNOT get in or out without a car. It is crazy.

Sounds like crowne plaza in Birmingham (UK), a stones throw from new street station. Birmingham is very walkable.
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