The entire country would be completely unworkable if you could only cross at a "cross-walk." Some villages literally don't have any. The only jaywalking-type laws in the UK are for motorways (70 MpH).
The whole jaywalking thing seems very authoritarian are arbitrary in the US. But the US has a lot of that type of thing in general. Just look at the recent articles about New York's ticketing strike, some of the things they were ticketing for on mass were a little odd and petty.
This sort of policing policy is controversial in New York and is relatively uncommon in the rest of the nation.
For what it's worth, violent crime and murders in most of these predominantly-minority communities has been reduced substantially in the past several years. However, it seems to result in at least some members of the community feeling substantially more oppressed, and it does result in inequal treatment of minorities by police if for no other reason than geographic correlation.
(Disclaimer. The general desirability of this approach is neither endorsed nor condemned herein.)
and it is very good reason. A bike on the move at say double pedestrian speed has like 30ft ahead by 6ft width virtual zone which is dangerous for anybody else and thus has to be empty. It just doesn't fit into typical sidewalk space which would typically be like those 6ft wide and bike rider routinely lets people get into the 30ft ahead zone thus constantly placing them in danger.
That being said, I haven't heard of anybody ever being caught for jaywalking in New Zealand.
That depends on your viewpoint.
Here in Holland people are being arrested for owning airsoft guns (toys which fire plastic ball-bearings at speeds high enough to pierce paper but low enough as to minimise chance of injury).
Americans would find that kind of insane.
Simply put, that isn't a good counter example to the parent's point, because it doesn't apply to more than a very small percentage of the US population.
from wikipedia,
new jersey: ~9 million
Netherlands: ~7 million
Erm, population of The Netherlands is 16.8million. See http://countryeconomy.com/demography/population/netherlands
But there's still 10 million people living in the rest of the country.
* Seattle: Pedestrians don't even jaywalk on empty streets at 1AM
* Manhattan: Jaywalk at your own risk
* Boston: Everyone jaywalks all of the time, everywhere. Pedestrians cross streets anywhere at free random and do not acknowledge the existence of motor vehicles.
What? Yes I do.
In Manhattan I have a different memory, of masses of people stubbornly crossing against the red, right at the crosswalk, while a taxi slowly tried pushing its way into the sea of pedestrians. But I don't blame them because in NYC every. single. god. damn. intersection has a traffic light. I guess they thought Stop signs weren't good enough. Or even just right of way.
I presume you haven't spent much time in Boston? There's a constant dialog that goes on between pedestrians, cars, bikes, etc where for any situation everybody judges each others' velocity, figures out the obvious ordering, and then executes on that plan. When there's a conflict, the party that's already behind generally delays themselves slightly and that's that. It's the people that don't understand this give-and-take that tend to cause problems.
To me, that seems a lot more reasonable that eg SoCal where if I'm planning on walking behind a car in a neighborhood or parking lot, most of the time they'll slam on their brakes and wave me on as if they're doing me a favor by getting in my way.
Austria does not have a jaywalking law but it has a law that requires any participant in traffic to adhere to light signals. Neither cars, nor bikes nor pedestrians are allowed to ignore red lights and if they do, they can be (and will be) fined.
I live near the German school in West London and have many German friends here. When I cross on the red light, I always get lots of hard stares from the Germans waiting at the crossing. Many don't realize the laws here are different, and it's perfectly legal. Of course if you do get yourself run over, the driver is unlikely to be found at fault.
OTOH, if you get run over, being right is little compensation.
I live about 1km from the Deutsche Schule. I was surprised to find three German bakeries within 5 minutes walk of my house when I moved here...
Actually, it's required everywhere—even on the freeway. Of course, it's illegal for pedestrians to be walking on the freeway.... But pedestrians ALWAYS have right of way.
The police actively patrol main crosswalks and ticket offending cars, at least downtown and near the horse track.
It least to (most) cars being very aware of people about to cross, and nearly everyone stopping to allow safe crossings.
FWIW, many of these crosswalks are not at intersections, or at least not intersections with lights or stop signs.
This is California law, too, and I am beyond tired of people honking at me, peeling out to whip around me, then nearly killing the pedestrian for whom I stopped. I've never been one to succumb to road rage, but every time some impatient Californian gets behind me and starts punishing me for obeying the law, or nearly kills the pedestrian for whom my stopping was signal to proceed, I feel urges I do not wish to feel like walking back to their car with a fucking sledge hammer.
Although people like to get all legal scholar on this rather than just taking the ten seconds to be considerate (toe in a crosswalk? etc, just Google around for armchair Columbos trying to get out of their ticket with lexical study of the law), here's a good formula for driving success in California: if a pedestrian is crossing or preparing to cross the road in a marked or unmarked crosswalk with one of those yellow signs or without, stop. It's not that hard, but drivers here suck so much at this that it burns me. Sit next to Shoreline in Mountain View (south of Central), where there are several mid-block crosswalks that are frequently used, and watch how many people nearly die every day because some dipshit can't be bothered to apply his brake pedal.
At least in New Jersey and New York, I could predict that a driver was going to elect the most selfish choice. I could handle being cut off there because I could generally predict what another driver was going to do and plan accordingly. It felt like professional driving; I knew you were going to cut me off 30 seconds ago. Here? Between everybody texting, being indecisive, and not paying attention, I cannot predict with any measure of certainty what a Californian driver will do, including when I elect to obey the law and stop at a crosswalk. It drives me absolutely nuts.
Rant over, back to lurking.
In fact after learning english it took me several years to understand what the hell was "jaywalking" because as a Brazillian it makes no sense.
The cost is minimal and the benefit of not getting hit by a car whose driver didn't realize it was a one-way is pretty high.
Maybe it's an American thing, but I notice people completely flouting driving laws often enough that I don't trust anything but declared intentions when it comes to cars. Crossing at a crosswalk isn't even safe; many drivers seem to think speeding down the street and slamming on the brakes so that the car slides halfway into the designated pedestrian zone is okay.
I've been pretty regularly tempted to climb on top of car hoods on my way across the street without moving left or right.
Unless you're a modern GCC developer. Then this doesn't apply to you.
I want to point out it's not the "not looking both ways" that is the only significant cause. I walk 4 miles per day and I rarely jaywalk. I often have to jump out of the way of cars because they refuse to yield the right of way to me. I think it's a cultural thing. I think too few people walk in the US and therefore cannot empathize with people that do. The number of times someone waits for me to walk slightly out of their way and zooms past, within inches of me, is flat out infuriating. All it would take is a small miscalculation on their part to kill me. Honestly, it makes my blood boil thinking about it.
Put those people into cross walks 20-30 times a day for a month, and I'd bet they would stop doing that shit.