36 pedestrians were killed last year in accidents in my city. We have one contested police shooting.
31 the year before that, two contested shootings.
At least biweekly there's an article in the local paper about someone hit while illegally crossing a highway, often at night. I have unfortunately seen a pedestrian get hit by crossing on a red walk sign, luckily they survived.
Which is an indication that jaywalking isn't the real problem here, it's inattentive drivers. How many of the 36 above were similar situations?
I was making a right turn on a 40mph road on a green light. There's a crosswalk there so I checked and the crosswalk was vacant, made the turn and proceeded to get up to speed on that road.
And then immediately did a hard brake because a woman was illegally crossing the road around a bend, covered by trees, with a kid being dragged behind her, 40 feet from a crosswalk that clearly indicated DO NOT WALK.
There's a reason we have signs. Follow the signs. Having the right away is not the same as being impervious to being struck by a moving vehicle.
I walk and bike around my town a lot, and I'm very cognizant of my surroundings.
I can not even count how many times I've had people driving see me start to go in to a crosswalk and just totally blast through it, back out of driveways where I was very visible on the driver's side and not even look (TWICE only getting attention in time to not get hit by bashing on the car), people driving at high speed in to parking lots inches away.
A month ago I was walking out of a nearby park on the only road in and out, that doesn't have a sidewalk for some idiotic reason, and I had some asshole try to sideswipe me and ended up clipping me with their mirror on purpose.
Think about this next time you bring up a single instance of someone walking in a dangerous way. The design of cities in the US and the contempt of many people driving is many, many times worse for pedestrians than the other way around.
You're being ridiculous here. Nobody is asking for that, they're asking for sensible road design and sensible rules.
> because a woman was illegally crossing the road around a bend, covered by trees, with a kid being dragged behind her, 40 feet from a crosswalk that clearly indicated DO NOT WALK.
That's shitty road design (if the crosswalk is 40ft from a blind blocked corner in either direction, someone might not see it travelling at speed), and arguably careless driving - blind corners could have a deer, pedestrian, broken down car, etc.
> Having the right away is not the same as being impervious to being struck by a moving vehicle.
Right of way or not, you are the operator of the dangerous machine,not the pedestrian. The onus is on you to pay attention to your surroundings. It doesn't matter whose fault it is if you clip a child at 40mph, they're dead.
This is disingenuous.
Say for instance a person wants to die by being hit by traffic: they can jump out from behind a parked car right as the car passes. So in at least some percentage of cases, there's simply nothing even the most attentive driver could do to avoid hitting someone.
I'm not saying cars are never at fault (I walk, ride a bike, and ride a motorcycle, each more than I drive a car; I've got plenty of first hand experience with at-fault drivers) but framing it this way seems very dishonest to me.
Only a sith deals in absolutes. Just because you can't prevent someone who _wants_ to be hit from being hit doesn't mean you shouldn't be completely vigilant. As an example, it's not reasonable to expect an obstruction on highway/motorway traffic, but it _is_ on a 40mph road with crosswalks.
So you agree with my position then.
The post I was responding to was the one dealing in absolutes. I was saying that vigilance, while important, is not the only factor.
I want to see drivers be more vigilant. What I don't want is for people to defend a position that I hold, but with an argument that is easy to debunk.
Going substantially slower than the posted speed limit is a ticketable offense in most areas.
It also makes it more difficult for other drivers to judge your speed and position if you are not going either the posted or "accepted" speed for that stretch of road. This can and does cause accidents, particularly in retirement communities where older drivers slow down because they feel it will be safer.
My previous post was merely stating that driver vigilance is not the only factor in a collision with a pedestrian. Jumping out in front of the car is just one example because it's easy to visualize.
I am very much not stating that drivers are already vigilant enough. Only pushing back against a disingenuous statement. I don't want people to espouse a view I agree with (drivers should be more vigilant) with an argument that is easy to debunk.
Oh, you'd be surprised what "city activists" can devise in their stupid heads in my country. Their recent idea is: driver hiting pederastian should always be at fault, even if a drunk pederastian is suddenly jumping in front of their car, from behind the parked car or other obstacle.
That's the exact attitude that criminalization of jaywalking is teaching drivers. And that's exactly why it's killing people every day.
It's just as absurd as making a law that forbids women to walk alone at night (for their own safety) and blaming them if they break that law and get raped.
1.) If you cant see, you should not speed up.
2.) If you cant see, she cant see the crossroad either. Also, pedestrians dont are the ones with requirement to have driving license - drivers are the ones supposed to be in the know and in control.
> Which is an indication that jaywalking isn't the real problem here, it's inattentive drivers. How many of the 36 above were similar situations?
Perhaps your signals are different, but in my area a "red walk sign" means "Do Not Walk".
Your comment to me sounds like you're talking about a white walk sign, which would in fact be mostly attributable to inattentive drivers.
But if the sign is red, then while driver inattentiveness may be involved, it's not the primary culprit.
Same with people running don't walk signs. Often (but not always) they are set to be incredibly short for pedestrians and very long green for cars (to reduce traffic). This again makes people chance it.
The solution isn't criminalising it, it's building better cities.
In my own anecdotal experience, the most dangerous way to cross the road is in a marked crosswalk with a signal—as in, this is how I've come closest to death by car the most times in the city where I've been living for a few decades. Intersections with these crosswalks often have traffic coming from multiple directions, and you have to really understand the local traffic patterns to cross safely without exposing yourself to a vehicle running a red light or taking a hasty left turn without checking for pedestrians.
I would be interested to know how many of the pedestrian deaths in the statistic you quoted were due to jaywalking.
When I visited London a couple of years ago I was surprised to see that they set the crosswalk significantly back from the intersection. Meaning that a car turning actually can turn, and stop in front of the crosswalk for pedestrians. Which in turn means that the driver can pay attention to cars, decide to turn, and then separately deal with pedestrians rather than have pedestrians be part of a complicated decision.
I know of no research on it, but I have to believe that this design saves lives over the American standard of having the crosswalk right at the intersection.
Here, you cross where and when it's safe. Busy roads have crossings, because otherwise you might wait a very long time for it to be safe, but there are no crossings on 99% of streets, because you're allowed to cross them wherever you need to
The right way to fix pedestrian deaths on the streets is to slow the traffic down. It's a solved problem. It's been tested all over Europe. It works.
As a bonus you get walkable cities, less suburbanization, smaller rich-poor division, less crime in the cities, less traffic jams, more people using public transport and bikes, less air pollution and CO2 emissions.
You could solve people getting run over on the subway tracks by slowing those down too, but criminalization and station design is just a much better approach. Slowing down is inefficient and may cost just as many lifetimes, only in little pieces every day.
These stats are not an apples-to-apples comparison. You need to compare injuries per incident: number of vehicle-caused pedestrian injuries per pedestrian crossing vs. number of police-caused injuries per police interaction.
I have seen countless pedestrians walking at their top speed, the moment the walk sign turns green, only to have it turn red before they've cleared the intersection. In many of those situations where I've been driving, I've been honked at for not carelessly running down the elderly or disabled. If every crossing was long enough to permit those folks to cross in time, cities would be deluged with complaints. How many pedestrians in your statistics were physically incapable of crossing in time?
I've been nearly run over by probably a dozen cars in my life, while I've had the right of way in a crossing (my favorite being the time that a cop was looking one way and turning the other, and my timely shout saved my legs). How many pedestrians in your statistics had the right of way?
There are far more instances of jaywalking than police interactions, and yet pedestrian deaths are 6x higher than deaths from police. So no that is not true in any way, especially when you account for armed vs unarmed police shootings (~25 unarmed black people were shot and killed by police in 2019, where unarmed includes fake guns).
> There are far more instances of jaywalking than police interactions, and yet pedestrian deaths are 6x higher than deaths from police.
The first assertion actually cuts against your argument. If there are far more instances of jaywalking than police encounters, then even if there are many more deaths caused by jaywalking, police encounters could still be deadlier on a per-instance basis.
"And yet" is entirely the wrong conjunction here; if there are more instances of jaywalking than police encounters, then it logically follows there would be more deaths.
In fact, I'd argue that there are far more than 6x as many instances of jaywalking than there are police encounters, which kind of undermines your whole point.
Not all 6k deaths are from jaywalking, and not all 1k police deaths are unjustified so probably a poor comparison regardless
Given that non-cop/cop interactions are not risk-free, avoiding them is only sensible, as is not creating unnecessary reasons for interaction, like inventing "crimes" like this.
If you don't like thinking of cops as danger sources, then tell yourself it frees up cops for more important work.