I’m walking here!’: jaywalking legalized in New York City | The Guardian
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.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/29/new-york-jaywalking-legalOpen linkView original on sh.itjust.works561
Comments97
Eh, keeping car traffic smooth is way more challenging than keeping pedestrian traffic smooth. Also people tend to be more chaotic in there direction than cars. If a car stops in front of you you’re sorta stuck if a human stops in front of you you can always bash him in the head with a bar stool or go around or whatever.
I know it was auto manufacturers lobbying for the law but can you imagine people just randomly darting across an interstate moving at 80+ mph? I can because I have seen it before and not once have I thought wow I sure am glad that’s legal.
I think you might have picked a bad community to share your sympathies for smooth car traffic, I’m afraid.
For what it’s worth, I think it’s reasonable enough to forbid pedestrians from crossing high-speed (60+ mph) roads, but otherwise they should have full right of way over any road, and fuck the cars. They can just be patient and deal with it.
But what if those roads didn't have to exist at all. We could replace those with dedicated high speed rail corridors.
Which, presumably, you’d also restrict people from walking on :P
Those take up much less space, and can be built around.
Maybe, but the alternative is unrealistic and simply not the reality we Live in.(at least in the United States)
That’s how every progressive movement starts, until activists make them reality. If it’s a good idea, it’s a good idea - and if that’s not the way that things are done, the question stops being “is this a good idea”, and starts being “how can we implement this good idea”.
Can you imagine a car going 80+ mph in city traffic? I can't
I can. I just don't expect it to reach its destination without crashing.
I still can primarily because I live in Texas, it is not at all uncommon, not even on the interstate, though 40mph work zone going into school zones it happens regularly.
What, wait, no. I've lived in very rural areas, wtf was I supposed to do without a car? Bike back and forth a few hours for groceries?
There will always be edge cases. The trick is that your scenario ought to be an edge case rather than the most common case.
Some one is free to search actual numbers but in the US something like
For sure different transit or walking options are better for different scenarios but most people, including in the US, are in places where buses or trains can be useful
Don't live in rural areas. Those should be wildlife habitats, tbh.
So people should only live in dense, crowded cities? Because even in the suburbs it's not possible to grocery shop without a car.
Suburbs can ultimately be redesigned (and I'd argue they should, for a number of reasons)
Yeah but until then a man's gotta eat lol and I don't see them putting grocery stores every 2 miles any time soon.
I will never be sad when car brains like you learn the hard way that cars are nothing but weapons. This is exactly why cars should be completely illegal, full stop.
Ok, Let’s assume you are perfectly correct in every way, Now according to your hypothesis Cars have no purpose other than being a weapon, now since cars exist at least for the moment, it is probably for the best to make it illegal to dash across shooting ranges.
You see, here's the problem. It's not actually a shooting range. Streets weren't made for cars, but for people. Before cars you'd see humans, carriages, horses, etc. all coexisting within the same space.
Eh, I would say pedestrians in that case should be entitled to self-defence.
You think in a legally licensed clearly posted shooting rang someone darting through the range illegally should be allowed to retaliate?
Yes, because it would hopefully discourage car brains like yourself from wasting space in cities.
"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.
the term used here is "vulnerable". Vulnerability gives you priority
It would be nice if this was followed but the reality of the world is the opposite. It's right of weight, not right of way.
That's the same logic in the US. Except everyone yields to animals, because you can't tell a horse or a mule not to trample that person who walks next to them
Step 2. bring cars to the market before proper regulations were a thing
Step 3. aggressively lobby and market that it's the walkers fault for getting driven over
Step 4. actually win over public opinion somehow
Racism. The Jays in jaywalking where probably immigrants with weird hats.
Like halitosis, that term was coined in ads. Ads funded by car manufacturers
Step 1: be American
There are plenty of places you're not allowed to walk for your own safety and the safety of others. It's not a crazy concept, although I do think that jaywalking should be legal
“Right to Travel” == right to walk on and across an interstate freeway where 5000 lb death missiles are hurtling past me at 90 mi/hr.
Airports are so annoyingly difficult to walk around.
I prefer walking straight through, personally.
Good, especially since the law just targets POC.
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
Ditching cars should be done everywhere (not just in populated cities).
Agree, but it's certainly easier to do in NYC than rural places in the US, so I advocate for starting there
Sure.
At least in North America, around 80% of the population lives in a populated area. That means even if we only eliminate cars for urban areas, that's still most of the cars removed. The only way I see people in rural areas getting around without a car would be with electric cargo bikes and robust train routes.
Buses would be the short term solution except for the really far out rural areas, during the time in which far out exurbs and suburbs are redesigned for maximum density.
do you really expect people in rural areas to ditch cars?
will they go back to carts and horses?
I live in a rail hub in the us. The city is nicknamed after it and train tracks literally run through the city center.
It would take me 6 hours to walk there.
I think he means it would take six hours of walking to reach his city. I mean I live four miles outside of town (which incidentally I'd need to travel to to reach a railroad) and even though it's smaller than 3000 people it still calls its self a "city". Also I'd like to note it's four miles of hilly terrain, which depending on season may feature hundred degree plus temperatures or foot deep snow.
I live about ten miles outside the nearby city.
However my town has a train station. From my neighborhood of single family homes, I can walk about 20 minutes, or a bus drives by regularly to get me to the town center which includes the train station
I’m certainly not rural, but there’s no reason my scenario can’t apply to 80% of the population if more cities/towns were designed for it.
And this is in the US
Please tell me you're exaggerating. I live in a small city and it only takes me maybe an hour to walk across town. If it's taking you 6 hours, it's not rural.
and what do you use to get to the train station?
how do you carry goods to that station? Does your train have a stop in every farm?
it's not like i don't hate cars, i do. But i really can't see how you're going to convince "rurals" with that argument
good luck to you
Honestly? Buses would be a good short-term solution that can be implemented immediately with the right political will, and enough force.
Everything we do to make car travel worse (except for ambulances and disabled folks) is a win
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.
I support this law (fuck cars), but if you step into the street thinking an oncoming car won't destroy you like a pinata stuffed with ketchup packets, you have survived the luckiest lawsuit-free 28 years.
this really threw me when I first visited new york. I come from a place where you don't dare try that because you WILL get hit and the driver will likely get no consequences. seeing new yorkers just walk out into traffic without even looking was such a mindfuck
The cemetery is full of people who had the right of way.
This is great. Maybe I'm crazy, but I'm okay with violence against people who think their convenience takes priority over the safety of others.
the bricks all end up on one side of the cross walk. good idea, no way for it to actually work.
Regular enough bidirectional foot traffic would make it work.
Japan used a flag system, the higher the traffic the less likely it is to work
Flags aren't bricks.
It's hard throw a flag through a windshield.
It's a joke.
Just throw them back after use.
I love it, an elegant solution ... now if only we could find an elegant end user to actually implement it.
Yet somehow some city think it's a good idea to use the same exact idea but with a flag when crossing the street.
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.
Is disturbing the peace still a thing for them?
Yes.
In England and Wales where I am based, there is a really useful website that has information on laws that police like to use for protests: https://greenandblackcross.org/guides/laws/. Its a bit of a shame that the National Lawyers Guild doesn't also provide public resources on laws for the US states that they operate in in a similar way.
… it was illegal? No one has received a ticket for jaywalking in nyc.
No white people maybe.
Adam Ruins Everything had an episode about jaywalking and how it became a crime.
Are there ever any tickets for any sort of traffic violation of any sort in nyc?
Turning right on red apparently
I drive a delivery truck though nyc one day a week. I have unadulterated rage for the single passenger suvs that sit in the middle of intersections, causing gridlock cause they think they'll miss something by waiting their turn.
IIRC, it’s still illegal in many Australian states.
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.
And this changes: nothing
Never heard of Walking While Black? This at least forces police to come up with better excuses.
No you're right. Jaywalking was abused to target minorities but never did the law ever do anything to prevent it from happening.
Jaycarring is the new trend
restricting where and when people can walk in in a public space? sounds like communism
it's tiring to even think about the subjects to approach just to get you to see the ignorance in this comment
start by reading these 2 articles ☞
sorry this was a joke mocking conservatives who preach freedom but support jaywalking laws. i should have made it more clear.
When you can't train police not to be racist, just give up and make shit legal. What could possibly go wrong?
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.
In a lot of situations I would rather cross mid block than at a corner crosswalk. The cars can't be relied on to stop anyway, and mid-block there are a lot less directions you have to worry about.
Even if the intersection is signalized given the existence of right turns on red it's still often safer to cross mid block.
That's a good point most places, but in NYC, there is no turn on red. I still agree with being able to cross anywhere.
I could see that in some areas. I rarely feel the need to do this myself, but there are occasions where it does make sense.
Roads are the shackles of the patriarchy. Half joking
In Denmark it's illegal to cross the road 10-20m (or something like that, forgot the exact number) from a croasswalk. Outside that zone you can cross as much as you want. We are though seeing fences pop up on higher traffic roads to discourage crossing, but mostly on ring roads in bigger cities, not in the cities themselves.
There's no exact number. The law (færdselsloven §10.5) says "nearby".
similar in Austria, if there's a crosswalk within 25 meters, you have to use it although even that law has an exemption "this doesn't apply if traffic allows it without doubt and vehicle traffic isn't impaired"
Hint: most trams in Vienna are 35 meters long, so you can cross at the other end of a tram stop if there's a crosswalk only on one end.
UI vs UX
Where I'm from you need to be at least 30 meters from a crosswalk. Although in practice it just becomes whether or not there is a crosswalk within eyesight.
For the same reason that people dangerously exceed speed limits.