8 ms·

California's Broken Jaywalking Law

51 points by cozzyd 12y ago

escherize 12y ago
This is a bit like keeping speed limits down at 65 mph (a standard set when car technology was 50 years less mature). It's another way that the state can selectively punish most any citizen at will, within the bounds of law.
- deadfall 12y ago
  Yes, I agree. The flow of traffic for most commuters, like myself, seem to around 75 mph. "The speed limit is commonly set at or below the 85th percentile operating speed (being the speed which no more than 15% of traffic is exceeding)[41][42][43] and in the US is typically set 8 to 12 mph (13 to 19 km/h) below that speed." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limit
  - JoshTriplett 12y ago
    On the other hand, if the speed limit was set at 75mph, would that remain the common speed of traffic, or would the common speed increase with the limit?
    - cozzyd 12y ago
      On the Autobahn people drive at infinity km/h
      - raldi 12y ago
        Could you convert that to mph please?
        cptn_brittish 12y ago
        infinity mph
        darkmighty 12y ago
        The maximum speed there is 1, in natural units.
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
    - _asummers 12y ago
      Speed limits are 70MPH, 75MPH even 80MPH in some places in the US, apparently.[0] One could probably look at percentages of speeding tickets and reckless driving violations compared to states with lower limits and get some interesting results. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_in_the_United_Sta...
    - iopq 12y ago
      It would increase up to the point where people wouldn't feel comfortable driving faster. There's a huge benefit to this: there would be less inconsistency between driving speeds. It is more dangerous when someone is going 85 and someone else is going 65 compared to 85 and 75. The most dangerous is when one car is much faster than the others. There is little difference in terms of the chance of a crash if everyone is going 65 or everyone is going 75. The crash is more likely to be serious, but at least the people who are speeding are less likely to plow into someone when they're distracted.
- rtpg 12y ago
  car technology was 50 years less mature, but are our brains any better? There's a lot of studies showing the strong correlation between speed limits and car accident fatalities, even recently
  - cousin_it 12y ago
    I became much more skeptical about correlations after I read somewhere that cholesterol might be not a cause of heart disease, but rather a part of the body's reaction to heart disease. For some reason, that example just hit me really hard. People think that they can make causal conclusions from observed correlations, but they are wrong. As a rule of thumb, any correlation observed in the wild has at least three equally plausible explanations, two of which are tailored to the narratives of the two main political parties.
vacri 12y ago
Otherwise, what’s the point of having a countdown signal? It tells people currently on the crossing how long they have. If they're infirm, they may be better off waiting at a traffic island than trying to rush across. The red hand is pretty clear - it means "don't start crossing", not "start crossing if you're confident you can make it in time" (though that is the way the countdown is used). $200 is a ridiculous fine, though - that's over 20 hours work at the minimum wage.
- JoshTriplett 12y ago
  Agreed; this isn't at all ambiguous. If you were allowed to cross, it would be a walk signal with countdown.
  - cozzyd 12y ago
    No other place treats it that way (and most police departments have better things to do than to target pedestrians).
    - JoshTriplett 12y ago
      To the best of my knowledge, that's the meaning it has in Portland, and many other cities. (Now, on the other hand, I don't think that's vigorously enforced.)
  - danhak 12y ago
    Not if you take the walk signal to mean "it's safe to cross right now," which is not the case if you're on the curb and there's one second left. You also clearly haven't spent much time in L.A...many of these signs flash the walk signal for literally 2 or 3 seconds before beginning the 20 second red countdown.
    - sukilot 12y ago
      What's wrong with 2-3sec? That's plenty of time to start walking if you are paying attention in traffic.
hayd 12y ago
$190-250, sheesh - that fine amount is far to high. The maximum parking fine in LA, for parking on a red curb, only costs you $93.
- thatswrong0 12y ago
  I recently got a $197 ticket for crossing a marked crosswalk in an uncontrolled intersection on foot.. In front of a cop car. There was no danger, but he accelerated at me in the intersection causing a "hazard". Nailed me for CVc 21950(b). It's a racket - they're scumbags. If I didn't work in tech, that could be a very difficult amount to deal with.
  - knorby 12y ago
    Wish you fought that, since the cop broke CVc 21950(c).
pg_is_a_butt 12y ago
"broken" relative to who? seems like it works as designed to extract money from the people it was designed to extract money from, and give it to the people it was designed to give it to. government is a complete sham, and you pussies can't and won't do anything about it, because you are pussies. change only happens over dead bodies.
bentrevor 12y ago
I was in San Fransisco this past January, and I was actually stopped by an officer for crossing when the hand was blinking, even though I made it to the other side in time. I think it was a matter of the officer not having anything better to do, since it was 8 in the morning. I didn't get a ticket because I answered his questions politely, but I'm sure if I was still in high school, I would have been a smart-ass about it.
meddlepal 12y ago
As a Bostonian I find the idea of jaywalking fines quaint.
- tommoor 12y ago
  As an Englishman I find the idea of jaywalking quaint
  - meddlepal 12y ago
    As a Bostonian I find the idea of heriditary rule quaint.
    - ZeroGravitas 12y ago
      Technically they don't rule, they're just a prominent part of a network of very rich and well-connected families that move in the same social circles, go to the same schools, give each other jobs and sometimes intermarry. Luckily Boston has nothing like that.
menssen 12y ago
Anecdotally (I'm posting this to see if I'm the only one who's noticed), there's something culturally (or legally) unique about jaywalking in California. The ambiguity of countdown timers should have been a problem in every city/state that put them in. But I can't imagine reading this article about anywhere else because everywhere else, everybody jaywalks all the time and the laws are rarely enforced. But relatively nobody jaywalks in CA. A few years ago I was in downtown LA very early in the morning, standing on a street corner with five or so other people who were all patiently waiting for a green light to cross a completely empty street. No cars in sight. For someone from east of the Rockies, it's actually kind of surreal. Why is jaywalking such a big deal in CA?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- jballanc 12y ago
  I definitely don't think it's just you. Once, when I lived in the valley, I was at a restaurant on one side of the street and wanted to go to a shop across the street, but it was the middle of the block and I didn't feel like walking to the cross-walk. The road was 3 lanes in either direction, but there was a wide grassy median, so I did what I've always done growing up in NYC: I crossed the near 3 lanes and waited on the median for the traffic in the other direction to clear. Well, apparently the sight of a pedestrian in the median was unexpected enough that every driver in the far 3 lanes slammed on their brakes immediately, stopping traffic right in the middle of the block. It was as if they expected that I was just aimlessly wandering across the road and would step out into oncoming traffic if they didn't stop. Of course, I think at least part of the problem is that pedestrians, in general, are so rare in CA. I used to live ~1 mile from work and would walk in regularly, whereas co-workers who lived half that distance would always drive (and don't get me started about the difficulty walking after 9 pm when every lawn sprinkler in the valley would unleash a deluge across the sidewalks).
  - thanksgiving 12y ago
    > and don't get me started about the difficulty walking after 9 pm when every lawn sprinkler in the valley would unleash a deluge across the sidewalks This problem is not unique to California. I felt the same during my stay in Overland Park, Kansas (a small suburb close to Kansas City, Missouri). What was also noteworthy to me was how downtown kcmo was different when it snowed. They usually (always?) cleaned the sidewalks in downtown kcmo. However, Overland Park sidewalks were grossly neglected with snow from the streets often piled on the sidewalk with no apparent concern for pedestrians.
nahname 12y ago
Got a ticket for $205 while working in LA. Definitely felt like a cash grab.
dmitrygr 12y ago
Refuse to talk to cops (always, not just about jaywalking). Do not provide ID ever (unless driving, since it also happens to be your DL) and do not answer questions as to whether you have ID. The amount of paperwork they'll need to fill out in order to arrest you (and thus allow them to search you [the claim will be that the search is for weapons for their safety, but anything they find is free for them to use/look at, incl your ID, if you even have it]) makes it not worth it for them. They'll just find a stupider victim. Disclaimer: IANAL, but i do often end up in court with cops over a lot of things, this included, and have not yet paid any fines
- killerdhmo 12y ago
  This isn't really an endorsement though is it. IANAL and I'm not often in court with cops and I say cooperate they're people too. shrugs
  - MBlume 12y ago
    They're...people who want to point guns at you and steal your money? Why would anyone want to cooperate with people like that?
    - vegedor 12y ago
      because if you cooperate, they have one reason less to feel aggravated or get agitated. It's not black and white, good or bad, don't tempt a cop with a short fuse.
  - _delirium 12y ago
    In my experience, American cops are indeed 100% people, but a significant proportion are not good people. The worst, most vicious people I knew from high school became policemen. There are no standards. The police admit any ol' gun-fetishist idiot who wants to beat up "hippies and negroes". It barely even matters if he can hold a gun straight, because there are no standards and no accountability.
  - thanksgiving 12y ago
tommoor 12y ago
Obviously this thread needs a link to this article for anyone that missed it a few months back :) https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history
mullingitover 12y ago
The funny part is that it's also illegal for a car to make a turn through the crosswalk while pedestrians are anywhere in the crosswalk. This is far more dangerous than jaywalking and happens routinely. The law covering this is rarely/never enforced.
flurp 12y ago
Maybe the problem is the length of countdown timers? I don't know how they are determined and set but anecdotally I often see 10 seconds or sometimes others in excess of 15s or even 20s on a road that takes ~5s to cross. It seems to me like this is a reasonable law IF the timers were set to only give the pedestrians minimal amount of time to cross the street. Given it takes 5s to cross, timer starts with 5 remaining. Pedestrians in the road see it and rush to either side. Pedestrians about to enter the road will have an easier decision to make: I can't make it in 5s so I wait. Obviously some will think they can, then fine them; I think that's reasonable. But holding up pedestrians with 20s remaining seems unreasonable to me. The main problem I see is for slower pedestrians; seniors, handicapped etc. They might need more time and could be caught of guard in the middle of the street with no time remaining... An immediate thought would be a white flashing hand as a warning that time is running low (no counter!)... Probably requires lots of reprogramming though.
- iopq 12y ago
  I can make it in 5 seconds, some grandma can't. Shouldn't it be based on your speed, not the timer?
- hijiri 12y ago
  It might just be that the car traffic signals are patterned to last that long, so the pedestrian crossing signals are the same length to match. But that would depend on the crosswalk.
iwwr 12y ago
The fact that there is such a thing as 'jaywalking' is a broken aspect of modern society.
upofadown 12y ago
I'm actually OK with the enforcement. The politicians should do their damn jobs and update the laws. The police shouldn't have to maintain a list of exceptions in their heads. ... and yes, this is a car culture thing. Most of the broken laws relate to bikes and pedestrians in the places where I have bothered to look.
chrisbennet 12y ago
It makes as much sense to ticket pedestrians crossing during the countdown, as it would to ticket drivers for entering the intersection during a yellow light.
sukilot 12y ago
What's interesting is that cities have found that countdown timers cause drivers far up the block to race to beat the green light before to turns yellow/red, which then causes collisions with bikers and pedestrians.
- lttlrck 12y ago
  which cities? I haven't seen this behavior around Boston and the drivers are nuts around here.
- 5555624 12y ago
  I haven't seen this behavior with cars; but, as a cyclist, I use them to figure out if I can make it through an upcoming intersection or not. What's annoying is the lack of a standard action when the countdown timer reaches zero. At some intersections, the timers are set so that the yellow light is the last second or two and zero is when the traffic light changes to red. Other hit zero and then the traffic light changes to yellow. Some hit zero and a number of seconds pass before the traffic light changes to yellow.

51 points by cozzyd 12y ago

This is a bit like keeping speed limits down at 65 mph (a standard set when car technology was 50 years less mature). It's another way that the state can selectively punish most any citizen at will, within the bounds of law.

deadfall 12y ago
Yes, I agree. The flow of traffic for most commuters, like myself, seem to around 75 mph. "The speed limit is commonly set at or below the 85th percentile operating speed (being the speed which no more than 15% of traffic is exceeding)[41][42][43] and in the US is typically set 8 to 12 mph (13 to 19 km/h) below that speed." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limit
- JoshTriplett 12y ago
  On the other hand, if the speed limit was set at 75mph, would that remain the common speed of traffic, or would the common speed increase with the limit?
  - cozzyd 12y ago
    On the Autobahn people drive at infinity km/h
    - raldi 12y ago
      Could you convert that to mph please?
      - cptn_brittish 12y ago
        infinity mph
      - darkmighty 12y ago
        The maximum speed there is 1, in natural units.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
  - _asummers 12y ago
    Speed limits are 70MPH, 75MPH even 80MPH in some places in the US, apparently.[0] One could probably look at percentages of speeding tickets and reckless driving violations compared to states with lower limits and get some interesting results. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_in_the_United_Sta...
  - iopq 12y ago
    It would increase up to the point where people wouldn't feel comfortable driving faster. There's a huge benefit to this: there would be less inconsistency between driving speeds. It is more dangerous when someone is going 85 and someone else is going 65 compared to 85 and 75. The most dangerous is when one car is much faster than the others. There is little difference in terms of the chance of a crash if everyone is going 65 or everyone is going 75. The crash is more likely to be serious, but at least the people who are speeding are less likely to plow into someone when they're distracted.
rtpg 12y ago
car technology was 50 years less mature, but are our brains any better? There's a lot of studies showing the strong correlation between speed limits and car accident fatalities, even recently
- cousin_it 12y ago
  I became much more skeptical about correlations after I read somewhere that cholesterol might be not a cause of heart disease, but rather a part of the body's reaction to heart disease. For some reason, that example just hit me really hard. People think that they can make causal conclusions from observed correlations, but they are wrong. As a rule of thumb, any correlation observed in the wild has at least three equally plausible explanations, two of which are tailored to the narratives of the two main political parties.

vacri 12y ago

Otherwise, what’s the point of having a countdown signal? It tells people currently on the crossing how long they have. If they're infirm, they may be better off waiting at a traffic island than trying to rush across. The red hand is pretty clear - it means "don't start crossing", not "start crossing if you're confident you can make it in time" (though that is the way the countdown is used). $200 is a ridiculous fine, though - that's over 20 hours work at the minimum wage.

JoshTriplett 12y ago
Agreed; this isn't at all ambiguous. If you were allowed to cross, it would be a walk signal with countdown.
- cozzyd 12y ago
  No other place treats it that way (and most police departments have better things to do than to target pedestrians).
  - JoshTriplett 12y ago
    To the best of my knowledge, that's the meaning it has in Portland, and many other cities. (Now, on the other hand, I don't think that's vigorously enforced.)
- danhak 12y ago
  Not if you take the walk signal to mean "it's safe to cross right now," which is not the case if you're on the curb and there's one second left. You also clearly haven't spent much time in L.A...many of these signs flash the walk signal for literally 2 or 3 seconds before beginning the 20 second red countdown.
  - sukilot 12y ago
    What's wrong with 2-3sec? That's plenty of time to start walking if you are paying attention in traffic.

hayd 12y ago

$190-250, sheesh - that fine amount is far to high. The maximum parking fine in LA, for parking on a red curb, only costs you $93.

thatswrong0 12y ago
I recently got a $197 ticket for crossing a marked crosswalk in an uncontrolled intersection on foot.. In front of a cop car. There was no danger, but he accelerated at me in the intersection causing a "hazard". Nailed me for CVc 21950(b). It's a racket - they're scumbags. If I didn't work in tech, that could be a very difficult amount to deal with.
- knorby 12y ago
  Wish you fought that, since the cop broke CVc 21950(c).

pg_is_a_butt 12y ago

"broken" relative to who? seems like it works as designed to extract money from the people it was designed to extract money from, and give it to the people it was designed to give it to. government is a complete sham, and you pussies can't and won't do anything about it, because you are pussies. change only happens over dead bodies.

bentrevor 12y ago

I was in San Fransisco this past January, and I was actually stopped by an officer for crossing when the hand was blinking, even though I made it to the other side in time. I think it was a matter of the officer not having anything better to do, since it was 8 in the morning. I didn't get a ticket because I answered his questions politely, but I'm sure if I was still in high school, I would have been a smart-ass about it.

meddlepal 12y ago

As a Bostonian I find the idea of jaywalking fines quaint.

tommoor 12y ago
As an Englishman I find the idea of jaywalking quaint
- meddlepal 12y ago
  As a Bostonian I find the idea of heriditary rule quaint.
  - ZeroGravitas 12y ago
    Technically they don't rule, they're just a prominent part of a network of very rich and well-connected families that move in the same social circles, go to the same schools, give each other jobs and sometimes intermarry. Luckily Boston has nothing like that.

menssen 12y ago

Anecdotally (I'm posting this to see if I'm the only one who's noticed), there's something culturally (or legally) unique about jaywalking in California. The ambiguity of countdown timers should have been a problem in every city/state that put them in. But I can't imagine reading this article about anywhere else because everywhere else, everybody jaywalks all the time and the laws are rarely enforced. But relatively nobody jaywalks in CA. A few years ago I was in downtown LA very early in the morning, standing on a street corner with five or so other people who were all patiently waiting for a green light to cross a completely empty street. No cars in sight. For someone from east of the Rockies, it's actually kind of surreal. Why is jaywalking such a big deal in CA?

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
jballanc 12y ago
I definitely don't think it's just you. Once, when I lived in the valley, I was at a restaurant on one side of the street and wanted to go to a shop across the street, but it was the middle of the block and I didn't feel like walking to the cross-walk. The road was 3 lanes in either direction, but there was a wide grassy median, so I did what I've always done growing up in NYC: I crossed the near 3 lanes and waited on the median for the traffic in the other direction to clear. Well, apparently the sight of a pedestrian in the median was unexpected enough that every driver in the far 3 lanes slammed on their brakes immediately, stopping traffic right in the middle of the block. It was as if they expected that I was just aimlessly wandering across the road and would step out into oncoming traffic if they didn't stop. Of course, I think at least part of the problem is that pedestrians, in general, are so rare in CA. I used to live ~1 mile from work and would walk in regularly, whereas co-workers who lived half that distance would always drive (and don't get me started about the difficulty walking after 9 pm when every lawn sprinkler in the valley would unleash a deluge across the sidewalks).
- thanksgiving 12y ago
  > and don't get me started about the difficulty walking after 9 pm when every lawn sprinkler in the valley would unleash a deluge across the sidewalks This problem is not unique to California. I felt the same during my stay in Overland Park, Kansas (a small suburb close to Kansas City, Missouri). What was also noteworthy to me was how downtown kcmo was different when it snowed. They usually (always?) cleaned the sidewalks in downtown kcmo. However, Overland Park sidewalks were grossly neglected with snow from the streets often piled on the sidewalk with no apparent concern for pedestrians.

nahname 12y ago

Got a ticket for $205 while working in LA. Definitely felt like a cash grab.

dmitrygr 12y ago

Refuse to talk to cops (always, not just about jaywalking). Do not provide ID ever (unless driving, since it also happens to be your DL) and do not answer questions as to whether you have ID. The amount of paperwork they'll need to fill out in order to arrest you (and thus allow them to search you [the claim will be that the search is for weapons for their safety, but anything they find is free for them to use/look at, incl your ID, if you even have it]) makes it not worth it for them. They'll just find a stupider victim. Disclaimer: IANAL, but i do often end up in court with cops over a lot of things, this included, and have not yet paid any fines

killerdhmo 12y ago
This isn't really an endorsement though is it. IANAL and I'm not often in court with cops and I say cooperate they're people too. shrugs
- MBlume 12y ago
  They're...people who want to point guns at you and steal your money? Why would anyone want to cooperate with people like that?
  - vegedor 12y ago
    because if you cooperate, they have one reason less to feel aggravated or get agitated. It's not black and white, good or bad, don't tempt a cop with a short fuse.
- _delirium 12y ago
  In my experience, American cops are indeed 100% people, but a significant proportion are not good people. The worst, most vicious people I knew from high school became policemen. There are no standards. The police admit any ol' gun-fetishist idiot who wants to beat up "hippies and negroes". It barely even matters if he can hold a gun straight, because there are no standards and no accountability.
- thanksgiving 12y ago

tommoor 12y ago

Obviously this thread needs a link to this article for anyone that missed it a few months back :) https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history

mullingitover 12y ago

The funny part is that it's also illegal for a car to make a turn through the crosswalk while pedestrians are anywhere in the crosswalk. This is far more dangerous than jaywalking and happens routinely. The law covering this is rarely/never enforced.

flurp 12y ago

Maybe the problem is the length of countdown timers? I don't know how they are determined and set but anecdotally I often see 10 seconds or sometimes others in excess of 15s or even 20s on a road that takes ~5s to cross. It seems to me like this is a reasonable law IF the timers were set to only give the pedestrians minimal amount of time to cross the street. Given it takes 5s to cross, timer starts with 5 remaining. Pedestrians in the road see it and rush to either side. Pedestrians about to enter the road will have an easier decision to make: I can't make it in 5s so I wait. Obviously some will think they can, then fine them; I think that's reasonable. But holding up pedestrians with 20s remaining seems unreasonable to me. The main problem I see is for slower pedestrians; seniors, handicapped etc. They might need more time and could be caught of guard in the middle of the street with no time remaining... An immediate thought would be a white flashing hand as a warning that time is running low (no counter!)... Probably requires lots of reprogramming though.

iopq 12y ago
I can make it in 5 seconds, some grandma can't. Shouldn't it be based on your speed, not the timer?
hijiri 12y ago
It might just be that the car traffic signals are patterned to last that long, so the pedestrian crossing signals are the same length to match. But that would depend on the crosswalk.

iwwr 12y ago

The fact that there is such a thing as 'jaywalking' is a broken aspect of modern society.

upofadown 12y ago

I'm actually OK with the enforcement. The politicians should do their damn jobs and update the laws. The police shouldn't have to maintain a list of exceptions in their heads. ... and yes, this is a car culture thing. Most of the broken laws relate to bikes and pedestrians in the places where I have bothered to look.

chrisbennet 12y ago

It makes as much sense to ticket pedestrians crossing during the countdown, as it would to ticket drivers for entering the intersection during a yellow light.

sukilot 12y ago

What's interesting is that cities have found that countdown timers cause drivers far up the block to race to beat the green light before to turns yellow/red, which then causes collisions with bikers and pedestrians.

lttlrck 12y ago
which cities? I haven't seen this behavior around Boston and the drivers are nuts around here.
5555624 12y ago
I haven't seen this behavior with cars; but, as a cyclist, I use them to figure out if I can make it through an upcoming intersection or not. What's annoying is the lack of a standard action when the countdown timer reaches zero. At some intersections, the timers are set so that the yellow light is the last second or two and zero is when the traffic light changes to red. Other hit zero and then the traffic light changes to yellow. Some hit zero and a number of seconds pass before the traffic light changes to yellow.