Eliminate jaywalking laws: "The core problem lies with street design, not human behavior."

Yes, we've been here before.

    

Walking is not a crime: Dunman and others on the scourges of jaywalking in auto-erotic America.

Like the jaywalker said: "People don’t obey the rules when they’re driving. Why should I?"

But any little chink to be taken from the imperialistic edifice of automobile supremacy is worth a well-aimed Molotov cocktail here and there. 

9 Reasons to Eliminate Jaywalking Laws Now, by Angie Schmitt and Charles T. Brown (CityLab)

They’ve rarely protected pedestrians, and their enforcement is racially biased. Two street safety experts say there are better ways to curb traffic violence.

On Sept. 23, Kurt Andreas Reinhold, a 42-year-old Black man, was trying to cross a street in San Clemente, California, when two officers from a special “homeless outreach unit” stopped him. An altercation ensued; minutes later, Reinhold, a father of two and down-on-his-luck former youth soccer coach, was shot and killed. In a cellphone video of the confrontation, Reinhold can be heard demanding, “Where did I jaywalk?”

This is a particularly troubling example of a pattern we see all too often. Black and Brown people, especially men, are routinely targeted by police for jaywalking or simply existing in public space. Often these stops result in an escalating series of fines and fees. In other cases — as in San Clemente, as well as in Sacramento, Seattle and New York City — they can end in violence.

Especially at a time when there is intense focus on police brutality and racism, Reinhold’s death should prompt us to pause and consider who is truly served by jaywalking laws. Their effectiveness as safety measures appears to be limited: Despite heavy handed and selective jaywalking enforcement, pedestrian deaths in the U.S. have increased rapidly in the last decade. As two of the top experts on pedestrian safety in the country, we think it is time for cities to consider decriminalizing jaywalking or eliminating the infraction altogether.

Here’s why.

1. Jaywalking is a made-up thing by auto companies to deflect blame when drivers hit pedestrians.
2. The concept of jaywalking encourages drivers to be aggressive toward pedestrians, and for third parties to ignore or excuse pedestrian deaths.
3. Our streets are not designed to make walking safe or convenient.
4. Pedestrians are almost as likely to be struck and killed at an intersection as mid-block.
5. When pedestrians jaywalk, they are often behaving rationally.
6. Jaywalking laws are not enforced fairly.
7. Jaywalking stops are frequently explosive.
8. The focus on jaywalking reflects the lower political status of those who walk — not the societal harm of the activity.
9. The safest countries globally allow jaywalking.

snip

Eliminating jaywalking laws may sound radical, but it’s been discussed before in cities such as Seattle. Other places, like Berkeley, California, are experimenting with new models for traffic enforcement that deemphasize police in favor of crash investigators who are trained to help promote infrastructure changes that improve safety. New York Attorney General Letitia James has advocated for removing police from traffic stops, and a new survey shows a majority of New Yorkers support the idea.

Wider reforms and changes to traffic safety enforcement are needed, from increasing diversity within law enforcement to enhanced data tracking, police training, inclusivity and investment in new social and criminal justice programs. Such efforts must be implemented with a vigilant eye towards reversing existing inequities: Early results from so-called “unbiased” enforcement efforts, such as intelligence-led enforcement, used by cities like Oakland, California, show disparities in traffic stops remain. The time is now, not later, to revisit or eliminate laws like jaywalking that are primarily used as a pretext to stop Black and Brown people — and rarely protected any pedestrians in the first place. 

Like the jaywalker said: "People don’t obey the rules when they’re driving. Why should I?"

Yes, we've been here before.

MONDAY, JUNE 20, 2016
A contrarian asks: Should there even be "walk" signals for pedestrians?

FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 2016
Blaming walkers for street danger is like blaming the unarmed for gun violence with the shooter right in front of you."

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2015
The Modern Moloch": When cars were viewed as child-eating gods to be appeased.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2015
Video: "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime."

SATURDAY, AUGUST 22, 2015
Walking is not a crime: Dunman and others on the scourges of jaywalking in auto-erotic America.

Jaywalking isn't a crime. It's a defense mechanism to circumvent wheeled stupidity, plain and simple.

Fearless, defiant, detested: Meet the Boston jaywalker, by Maria Cramer (Boston Globe)

... The long-running tension between the city’s drivers and its pedestrians spilled into City Hall last week after Mayor Martin J. Walsh took to the radio and suggested people pay more attention when they walk and bike around the city. He was instantly slammed by cycling and pedestrian advocates who accused him of victim blaming ...

On the topic of annoyance versus causation:

“Boston is without question the most lawless city when it comes to pedestrians,’’ said Peter Furth, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northeastern University. “It’s an annoying thing, but that is not the cause of our fatalities.’’

He said that Walsh’s comments that pedestrians should remove their headphones and quit darting in and out of traffic are undercut by data that show that at least four of the 15 pedestrians killed in Boston last year were older than 65. Two others were children under 3.

“The idea that pedestrians jaywalking makes for an unsafe environment is not borne out by the data,’’ Furth said.

In fact, a 2014 study that looked at 51 major metropolitan areas ranked Boston as the least dangerous city for pedestrians. The city’s chaotic streetscape, which lacks a traditional grid pattern makes the city safer for pedestrians, in a way, because cars are forced to drive more slowly, Furth said.

A contrarian asks: Should there even be "walk" signals for pedestrians?

Here's another way of looking at how best to walk across the street.

In a four-part opinion piece at GreaterGreaterWashington.org, Ben Ross considers signals and crosswalks, and argues on behalf of the principle that "negotiating the use of shared space makes roads safer."

Utopian or practical? You be the judge. Here are links to the four parts, each with a brief teaser.

---

Part 1. Careful jaywalking saves lives

Pedestrians put themselves in danger if they wait for a walk signal instead of crossing the street whenever and wherever it looks safest. There are no definitive studies, but that is what available evidence strongly suggests ...

... Drivers hit pedestrians when turning more often than when they are driving straight ahead. At a red light, drivers who are about to turn wait alongside pedestrians. The changing signal sends both into the intersection at the same time—maximizing the opportunities for collisions.

---

Part 2. Walk signals are bad for walking

Many pedestrians think the walk-don't walk light helps by letting them know when it's safe to cross the street. But its actual effect is to curtail the right to make that crossing.

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Part 3. Timing signals to work for pedestrians is impossible

It is possible, as New York and a few other cities have shown, for complex signals to make walking easier. Pedestrians get a few seconds to enter a crosswalk before cars can turn. Or turns are banned while people are crossing. But if you try to orchestrate movement on foot in this way at every streetcorner, the traffic engineers' job becomes entirely unmanageable. They cannot possibly find the time to adjust every walk signal for the proper balance between walking and driving.

---

Part 4. To make streets walkable, empower pedestrians to cross anywhere

As the previous posts in this series have shown, these simpler streets would be far safer. They could operate with only limited changes in the rules of the road. Drivers would follow traffic signals as they do today—pedestrians would have the right of way when they cross on green, but yield to drivers when the light is against them. The rule for crosswalks with no signal would not change at all; those on foot would still have the right of way at all times. Elsewhere, foot crossings would be allowed at any location, but pedestrians would have to yield.

"Blaming walkers for street danger is like blaming the unarmed for gun violence with the shooter right in front of you."

I'm letting Bluegill have this one. He shared the Broken Sidewalk article on Fb, and introduced it with this:

In a system that's so obviously and consistently designed to facilitate such dangerous automotive speeds, I jaywalk a lot quite knowingly. I walk offensively on purpose. It's currently the only thing that's occasionally effective to get cars to slow down in my neighborhood and so many others. An overwhelming majority of overly privileged, near sociopathic drivers won't police themselves. The City(s) won't do anything about it, either, in terms of comprehensive, inclusive design despite the fact that roughly two-thirds of street funding comes from non-automotive revenue streams. Even when they say they're doing it and spending millions of dollars, they're typically not actually doing it in any sort of sensible, equitable way. Using what you've got, even if it's just yourself, to create a physical obstacle is the only way. Blaming walkers for street danger is like blaming the unarmed for gun violence with the shooter right in front of you.

I couldn't agree more.

"The Modern Moloch": When cars were viewed as child-eating gods to be appeased.

Video: "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime."

Walking is not a crime: Dunman and others on the scourges of jaywalking in auto-erotic America.

I couldn't agree any more stridently.

Plan to issue fake citations to youth jaywalkers, promote “defensive walking” draws criticism, by Branden Klayko (Broken Sidewalk)

Youth summer program to educate kids on defensive walking and biking.

 ... Of those funds, Bike Louisville plans to spend $11,900 on a program to “educate youths to bicycle and walk defensively.” And part of that means a crackdown on jaywalking. Or at least a fake one. According to the KBBC, “the funding will allow several LMPD officers to bicycle in targeted areas around each of the nine community centers and hand out educational “citations” to youth who are not following the rules of the road.” According to Bike Louisville’s grant application, “The classes will teach our youth to walk and bicycle defensively, to anticipate dangerous situations, and to react appropriately.”

And that has been sparking controversy in online forums.

Louisville’s streets are deadly, built with the sole purpose of moving cars rapidly, and the city ranks above the national average for pedestrian fatalities—it’s not easy for anyone outside of a car to get around. We’re not going to educate our pedestrians out of our street safety problem. And even the most defensive walker is still no match for a distracted driver.

"The Modern Moloch": When cars were viewed as child-eating gods to be appeased.

Those are corpses on the platter. Photo credit: 99 Percent Invisible.

Reader DG suggested this link after viewing yesterday's video: Video: "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime."

It's a podcast, and it's a "must listen" for advocates of safe, complete two-way streets.

Episode 76: The Modern Moloch, by Roman (99 Percent Invisible)

On the streets of early 20th Century America, nothing moved faster than 10 miles per hour. Responsible parents would tell their children, “Go outside, and play in the streets. All day.”

And then the automobile happened. And then automobiles began killing thousands of children, every year.

Much of the public viewed the car as a death machine. One newspaper cartoon even compared the car to Moloch, the god to whom the Ammonites supposedly sacrificed their children.

Pedestrian deaths were considered public tragedies. Cities held parades and built monuments in memory of children who had been struck and killed by cars. Mothers of children killed in the streets were given a special white star to honor their loss.

The main cause for these deaths was that the rules of the street were vastly different than how they are today. A street functioned like a city park, or a pedestrian mall, where you could move in any direction without really thinking about it. The only moving hazards were animals and other people ...

... If a car hit someone, the car was to blame. From the New York Times, November 23, 1924:

The horrors of peace appear to be appalling than the horrors of war. The automobile looms up as a far more destructive piece of mechanism than the machine gun. The reckless motorist deals more death the artilleryman. The man in streets seems less safe than the man in the trench. The greatest single lethal factor is the automobile. It left shambles in its wake as it coursed through 1923.

Automotive interests banded together under the name Motordom. One of Motordom’s public relations gurus was a man named E. B. Lefferts, who put forth a radical idea: don’t blame cars, blame human recklessness. Lefferts and Motordom sought to exonerate the machine by placing the blame with individuals ...

Video: "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime."

"The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime" is from Adam Conover's Adam Ruins Everything, which is devoted to a worthy goal: "It shines light on popular false impressions and trends, debunking false ideas in society."

Come to New Albany, please. We're beset with 'em.

Thanks to Mr. B for the link, and his kind words. Previously at NAC:

Walking is not a crime: Dunman and others on the scourges of jaywalking in auto-erotic America.

From PPS: "Walking is Not a Crime: Questioning the Accident Axiom."

Walking is not a crime: Dunman and others on the scourges of jaywalking in auto-erotic America.

Photo credit: Vox (below).

I walk.

I walk a lot.

There is me, and there are hundreds of vehicles. Conscious of the disparity between 235 lbs and several thousand, I try to pay attention, but every now and then, I'll get distracted. except that I'm not moving very fast, and comparatively speaking, the vehicles are ... and at this late date, is it necessary to remind readers of how often all of us are distracted while driving?

Of how drivers talk, text, sing, and play with their cigarettes?

Of how they approach an intersection with a one-way street and look only in the direction of oncoming traffic, and almost never the other -- where a walker may be trying to cross?

Of how while distracted, they're usually traveling at an unsafe speed, especially in densely populated urban areas?

When you're walking, you see all of it, because you must do so for the sake of your own safety -- and for the sake of your own safety, you use your own two feet as intelligently and resourcefully as you can. Jaywalking isn't a crime. It's a defense mechanism to circumvent wheeled stupidity, plain and simple.

The Vox piece referenced by Dunman is worthy of a highlight.

The forgotten history of how automakers invented the crime of "jaywalking", by Joseph Stromberg

... "In the early days of the automobile, it was drivers' job to avoid you, not your job to avoid them," says Peter Norton, a historian at the University of Virginia and author of Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City. "But under the new model, streets became a place for cars — and as a pedestrian, it's your fault if you get hit."

One of the keys to this shift was the creation of the crime of jaywalking. Here's a history of how that happened.

Joe Dunman does a great  job of shining a light on another Fischer administration misstep: Blaming walkers for the behavior of drivers.

On LMPD’s jaywalking crackdown: We should not convert our police into well-armed tax collectors, by Joe Dunman (Insider Louisville)

... The idea that pedestrians don’t belong on the street and should only cross at narrowly defined places is a recent invention of the automobile age. Earlier this year, an illuminating article by Vox explored the history of traffic laws and jaywalking. In the old days now long gone, cities were a space for people, not cars. Now, especially since the Urban Renewal age of the 1960s and 1970s, all public space belongs to the almighty automobile. Where once it was the primary duty of vehicle drivers to avoid pedestrians, we now expect people on foot to get out of the way or risk death.

Not unexpectedly, there's this. How do supposed "Democrats" rationalize it?

It may or may not surprise you that the brunt of “broken windows” policies like jaywalking crackdowns falls disproportionately on the poor and non-white. Minor violations are used as an excuse to harass and financially exploit. In New York, 81 percent of the 7.3 million minor citations and summonses issued by police between 2001 and 2013 went to black and Hispanic people, who comprise much smaller minorities of the city’s total population.

Two years ago, NAC pointed to the following. It's worth a reprint. The passage below emphasizes solutions, but there is more to it. Hit the link, and learn.

Walking is Not a Crime: Questioning the Accident Axiom, by David M Nelson (Project for Public Spaces)

Solutions
There are many things that can be done to keep pushing the message back to a place that values human life first, and speed and efficient movement of automobiles second. On the policy side, get a Vulnerable Users Law introduced into your state legislature. Vulnerable Users Laws shift the burden of evidence onto the more dangerous individual. Drivers are responsible for cyclists, cyclists for pedestrians. I’m a huge fan of these laws, because pedestrians are put on a pedestal. They’ve been popular in Europe and are catching on in the United States.

You can also pursue other policies like Vision Zero, famously applied in Sweden and currently being campaigned for by Transportation Alternatives in NYC. Essentially, Vision Zero is a directive to eliminate all pedestrian and cyclists fatalities in quick order. The central premise being, “that no loss of life is acceptable.” Concerning law and order, you can find local lawyers to represent and advocate for justice on the behalf of pedestrians and cyclists injured or killed by drivers.

You can work to lower the speed of traffic. More specifically, advocate to decrease the range of speeds driven over a segment of road. A fundamental belief in traffic engineering is that differences in operating speed causes higher risks of crashes. Spread can be reduced by lowering speed limits and using roundabouts instead of signalized intersections. The end result is travel times remain the same but maximum operating speed and the range of speeds are significantly lowered. Other geometric changes include narrower lanes, pedestrian refuge islands, neck-downs and Rightsizing.

However, only so much will be accomplished until our local papers and the nightly news starts putting pressure on state DOTs and public works departments to keep our citizens safe on foot. So, first and foremost, pay closer attention to the way that pedestrian deaths are portrayed by the local media in your area, and don’t be afraid to put pressure your local news outlets when you see improper coverage that blames the victim. It is easy to find language in your State Statutes that debunk published misconceptions about crosswalks and jaywalking. We all have the right to walk—and like most rights, it’s one that must be defended.