
California's Broken Jaywalking Law - cozzyd
https://systemicfailure.wordpress.com/2015/04/15/californias-broken-jaywalking-law/
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menssen
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?

~~~
jballanc
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).

~~~
iopq
Even worse, you get to street that has no sidewalk at all, you cross and the
other side has no sidewalk either. Literally no sidewalk on either side of the
street!

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lsaferite
Welcome to 90%+ of the US.

I live in a fairly rural city and drive a stretch of road every morning with
no sidewalk and lots of walkers in the grass. And the speed limit is 65. I'm
constantly worried some idiot will wander onto the road.

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dmitrygr
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
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
They're...people who want to point guns at you and steal your money? Why would
anyone want to cooperate with people like that?

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escherize
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.

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deadfall
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
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?

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cozzyd
On the Autobahn people drive at infinity km/h

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raldi
Could you convert that to mph please?

~~~
darkmighty
The maximum speed there is 1, in natural units.

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mullingitover
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.

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vacri
_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
Agreed; this isn't at all ambiguous. If you were allowed to cross, it would be
a walk signal with countdown.

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Cymen
That is a joke -- people walk at different speeds. Walking in carland is
enough punishment. The worst are burbias where the walk signal never comes on
if you don't press a button.

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vacri
_Walking in carland is enough punishment_

LA was the only place I've ever been crossing the road with the valid
pedestrian signal and had to stop walking or I'd literally walk into the car
turning across my path (to the right, with the same green light I'm crossing
with). It happened a couple of times, and I was only there for one week.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
You have never been to china before. Here crossing the street is a game of
frogger.

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flurp
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.

~~~
hijiri
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.

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hayd
$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
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
Wish you fought that, since the cop broke CVc 21950(c).

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tommoor
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)

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

~~~
tommoor
As an Englishman I find the idea of jaywalking quaint

~~~
meddlepal
As a Bostonian I find the idea of heriditary rule quaint.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
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.

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bentrevor
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.

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

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sukilot
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.

~~~
5555624
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.

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chrisbennet
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.

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

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upofadown
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.

