New law, letting people cross street outside of crosswalk, ends racial disparities in enforcement, council member says
The new law permits pedestrians to cross a roadway at any point, including outside of a crosswalk. It also allows for crossing against traffic signals and specifically states that doing so is no longer a violation of the city’s administrative code. But the new law also warns that pedestrians crossing outside of a crosswalk do not have the right of way and that they should yield to other traffic that has the right of way.
"Jaywalking" being a crime is such a fundamentally brainrot thing
The law here in Brazil, not that anyone follows it, but it basically follows the logic of "the smaller you are, the more of a right of way you have". I.e. theoretically, a car should ALWAYS stop or slow itself to save a pedestrian or cyclist or even a motorcyclist
.... Again, not that anyone follows it, but it IS on the paper.
In 28 years living in New York, the vast majority of my crossing the street is done between the blocks. Some of them are very long.
And New Yorkers cross the street like we own it because we know that anyone who hits us is gonna get their ass sued off and have to pay out ridiculous amounts of money.
If car traffic became 50% worse to make walking traffic 5% better, that's a win for humans in the city. It'll help convince more people to use non-car methods of transportation and that helps spark people to vote for and invest in more non-car infrastructure.
Ditching cars in populated cities isn't a magic law or anything, it's a slow incremental burn; legalizing pedestrians walking strictly helps that
They were also fans of using it against left-wing protestors while ignoring the right doing it, particularly in the case of anti-genocide protests. I assume they will just find something new to pick people off in the crowd now.
This is how Illinois has been for ages. The legal penalties for hitting a pedestrian are higher to compensate. And if you hit a construction worker you'd best hope you're rich, because that's a big-ass $10k fine on top of 10 years.
While I certainly don't think it should be a crime, 90% of the time I see people do it, they are near crosswalks and continue to walk towards them after dangerously playing frogger. What is the motivation? Why are you increasing the danger? Doesn't make any sense.