California Gov. Gavin Newsom just signed the Freedom to Walk Act which largely legalizes jaywalking. Starting January 1, 2023, Golden State residents may cross against the light without threat of fines. Virginia, Nevada and Kansas City, Missouri, have already deregulated jaywalking. But can pedestrians be trusted with this level of freedom, or has government just unleashed crosswalk chaos with human lives in the balance?
Scott Ott, Bill Whittle and Stephen Green, have co-hosted a current events show since 2009 thanks to our Members and donors. To become a Member, tap the big green button above. To donate with PayPal or bank card, tap the big blue button above.
25 replies on “Nanny State Deregulates Jaywalking: Have They Unleashed Crosswalk Chaos or Pedestrian Freedom?”
This is the cheat code! They accidentally wrote a law increasing freedom because it allowed them to virtue signal. We just need to find more ways that they can virtue signal by increasing freedoms. It’s like jiu-jitsu. You don’t try to stop them, you use their own momentum against themselves.
The first roundabout that I encountered was in Massachusetts in the 1970’s. At that time, it was referred to as a rotary. Actually, the locals referred to it as a “wotawe”.
There is a kind of pedestrian crossing called a scramble crossing. The US has a few. They are increasing world wide. They reduce crossing time for both pedestrians and drivers. When the walk sign goes green they all do at the same time and all traffic is stopped. Pedestrians can cross either street or diagonally across from corner to corner. The intersection clears of people in seconds. Generally the system alternates car directions with a pedestrian cycle between every change. Its the fastest safest design available. It reduces J walking significantly. Its kind of a US invention but it got forgotten often because the pedestrian interval was too long. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedestrian_scramble
The Japanese ones look really ugly though.
I was nearly hit at a level crossing at 11 pm leaving the university campus. I had a green walk sign and was a meter onto the road and a car came out of nowhere on Markus Clarke street. It missed me by inches. I felt the rainwater splashing of the body work. The female driver hit the brakes and skidded to a spin ending up in the middle of the intersection facing the way she had come looking at me in terror. She had had a few too many I suspect. So level crossings are really only as good as the driver training. If the drivers are really bad then the level crossings a themselves a hazard.
The US does not like roundabouts because someone sabotaged them back in the 30’s. He wrote the national laws on roundabouts and he gave people entering the roundabouts right of way the opposite of every other country in the world. People have been trying to work out why for decades. Who bribed him to sabotage it? Was it one of the companies that made traffic lights or was he just a powerful idiot.
Also in most of the world GPS is very clear which exit to take at a roundabout so someone has not programming the little voice to say the right thing on US GPS apps. “at the roundabout take the second exit.” I would be fascinated to see if the same GPS gave the correct instructions in Canada and Mexico.
I would not be surprised if this was packaged with several pro-cycling legislation and a bunch of anti-car legislation. This may be the anti-oil lobby at work.
I’ve done a lot of driving all over the world, both personal and professional driving. I love roundabouts when everyone knows what’s going on and how to use them. They are about the slickest road transition ever devised by the mind of man.
Cloverleaf exits and exchanges on freeways are just roundabouts with the round part offset from the main lanes of travel so through traffic doesn’t have to slow down.
If you’re a good driver who understands how roundabouts work, and follow the right-of-way rules like everyone else is doing, they’re very safe.
If you don’t have a clue about roundabouts and have never seen one they can be a bit problematic because everything is constantly in motion. Even if a lot of the drivers know what they’re doing but a significant fraction don’t a roundabout can be dangerous.
There’s a roundabout on PCH (Pacific Coast Highway) in Long Beach that will scare the crap out of you because about half the drivers don’t know, or don’t care, how it’s supposed to work.
Roundabouts work best in places where people are raised to be courteous and considerate. That’s not something you can say about Los Angeles County.
Roundabouts also work best after people get so used to them that it’s second nature, like entering or exiting a freeway. So if we ever adopt roundabouts in America on a widespread basis it’s going to take about a generation before Americans all get the hang of them.
There’s a hole in this law. It is generally the case that if you are BREAKING a law and the result of breaking that law is injury or death then the cause of your injury or death is not liable. Because you shouldn’t have been doing the thing that caused your injury or death in the first place that makes you responsible for what happens to you. Pretty simple concept.
The problem with this jaywalker law is simply that it needs to ALSO state that if you get hit by a moving vehicle the driver of the vehicle is not liable for your injuries. You chose to cross the street where you did and you assumed all the liability for what happens to you when you did that.
Because otherwise you are no longer breaking the law by jaywalking and that relief from liability that comes when you break the law no longer applies. So it should be defined in the law.
I rode a pretty boss motorcycle back in my younger days and the state I lived in had a helmet law. The helmet law said that if someone hit you on your bike and they were at fault and you were wearing a helmet then there was no limit to the damages you could seek to correctly, legally and morally make yourself whole (or as whole as possible, bike accidents are nasty).
However, if you rode your motorcycle without a helmet then the maximum help you could get from the insurance companies involved was limited to the maximum of the policy. So if you were not wearing a helmet and someone else driving a car hit you and smooshed your brain and they had a minimum coverage of say 30/50 the most their insurance had to pay was the max and the driver, even though at fault, was not liable for any further damages or costs. YOU chose not to wear a helmet. (In case you’re not aware, getting your brain smooshed can cost a hell of a lot more than $50,000 to fix.)
So of course I never wore a helmet. I trust my driving a lot more than I trust a helmet and you can still get your brain smooshed even with a helmet on. For me, this never became an issue.
The point here is that if you choose to do something then the liability for that thing should be on you, not the car you ‘legally’ jumped out in front of to cross the street. So If the law specifies that, people will be a lot more careful legally jaywalking.
Sounds like none of you have ventured out of “the City (of your choice) for a loonnnggg time. I’m in Banning/Beaumont, CA. WE don’t have the homeless problems that much larger cities do, but every time I go somewhere I have to wait for some homeless person to dilly-dally their way across the street. Some push their carts or bikes, or just tote their overloaded black bags. I’ve also been stopped at a red light and seen people roaming about smartly waiting for the light to change, then stepping in front of a car, THEN turning back, dawdling, dilly-ing, “waiting for my cousin” or whatever. This law is nothing more than pandering once again.
The other day I was driving home from my daughters house at about 8:30 PM, uber dark night, traffic backed up all around the poorly lit I-10 on/off ramps, cars from three shopping centers zipping around, and here comes homie the homeless guy pushing his shopping cart, pulling his trailer, right out into traffic diddi-bopping across 5 traffic lanes plus 2 shoulders.
This is just another stupid democrat “I’m in charge, muffers” garbage.
I’m just over the hill from you in Hemet. The only streets that are fairly well-lit are Florida and part of Sanderson. As our night vision declines as we get older, and the homeless love wearing black clothing, it won’t be long before we start seeing roadkill.
You’re in a nice area. Looked at a number of properties there when I retired. Wife had a lot to say about where we would live and chose a “more deserty” area.
I’m good with Hemet. But we are starting to see more and more meth heads and homeless. Makes me sad. I used to go over the hill often as I love going ‘junking’ and there are a ton of antique stores in your area. Haven’t been there for a while though – time for a visit!
Oh, but thousands of drivers, now, pay little attention to traffic lights. In Phoenix, a red light is a signal to begin thinking about stopping.
I woke up crabby today. So my reaction to letting people jaywalk is… since they can’t solve the homeless problem, the portion that are drug addicts can easily be dispensed of this way. Especially in smaller towns that aren’t as brightly lit up at night as the larger cities.
My girlfriend and I got stuck in a driving circle in Tijuana many years ago. The locals were playing with us gringos and blocked our ability to exit. We must have gone around this statue 25 times or more with the main blocker laughing his ass off. We were laughing too, but thought for sure we were going to die. Not a fan of driving circles!
Heh … The problem you describe is not one of traffic circles, it’s one of being in Tijuana. Tijuana is a terrible, dangerous place full of a lot of butt-bananas trying to mess with gringos.
Some friends and I used to go down there to drink and stir things up when I was stationed at Pendleton/Coronado. We never went in less than Fire Team (4 people) strength and even then barely got out with our hides intact on more than one occasion. This was decades ago, it’s a lot worse down there now. If Tijuana can give four Marines in the prime of their lives issues I can’t imagine two unescorted women and the trouble you could get into there.
You’re very fortunate, or blessed if you prefer, to have nothing more than a butthole who wanted to play with you in a traffic circle mar your experience in Tijuana.
This adventure occurred many, many years ago. I would not dare to go down there now! We would actually go to Rosarita Beach in her rattle-trap Audi Fox, (because you never wanted to take a good car down there), to eat lobster and buy baskets for Christmas gift giving every year until my girlfriend moved up north.
However, there was one instance where I went to Tijuana with a group of other friends and that one truly terrified me. The woman driving was a cab driver and drove like she was in New York. Then a man tried to pick up on our friend’s girlfriend and next thing I knew, they were breaking bottles and going after each other. I was never so glad to make it home in my life! We were in our twenties, and looking back, definitely not too bright. More proof that God had other plans.
I still don’t like driving circles. The ‘on ramps’ are too close together and it makes me nervous 😛
My first experience with roundabouts was thrilling. My wife and I had landed at Gatwick Airport in London, England in the dark and in the rain. We went and got in to a rental car with the steering wheel on the wrong side. I pulled out of the parking deck entering speeding traffic into a giant, multi-laned roundabout. My wife was immediately “fight-or-flight” screaming as we entered at speed, in the dark, in the rain, and on the wrong side of the car, using the wrong lane, and seeing a roundabout for the first time.
Good times.
Lol, I love those situations. I might have the situation well in hand and know for a fact that we’re in no danger but my wife would think we were in deadly peril. Then I would laugh at her. Probably one of the myriad reasons I’m not married anymore.
As for your wife, I can just imagine because every nerve in her body is telling her that she’s in the driver seat with no steering wheel, no control and EVERYTHING is wrong.
Good times indeed.
So, …, we’re driving to our hotel, rain falling in buckets, when My wife made me pull over and park so we could get our bearings. I pulled into a large driveway – couldn’t see anything because it was so dark – and she asked me if I knew where we were. I said “For all I know, this could be f—ing Buckingham Palace”. As soon as the words left my mouth, a Bobby knocked on the driver’s side window. I rolled it down, rain so loud it was hard to hear, and he said “Sir, you can’t park in front of Buckingham Palace.” We burst out laughing. Our hotel was a block away. They don’t light the palace at night since the blitz. This was pre-2001.
Good story, England (well anywhere in Britain actually) is my favorite part of Europe. I have a friend who lives in Watford Herts (a suburb of London) and when I was on ‘the continent’ I’d go visit him every chance I got. He and his family were my Christmas-away-from-home several times and I absolutely LOVE celebrating Christmas in England. I’d rather have been home of course but Christmas in London will always be my second choice.
You’ve never seen a new year in properly unless you’d done it in Trafalgar Square with a bunch of drunken Brits.
The cops in Britain are a sharp contrast to cops in America. Unlike American LEOs the police in Britain are not trained to take control and dominate every interaction they have with the public. They take a different, to my mind more civil approach to public police work. They will only put up with so much nonsense but if you’re friendly and respectful they’ll reciprocate and treat you kindly.
If you’d lost your way in Washington DC and wound up parked in front of a inexplicably dark White House in the wee hours of the morning you would likely get a little more vigorous response than a polite knock on your car window and a friendly reminder that you can’t park there.
Sadly, I have to ask. Are the proprietors of “Boney Island” white and heteronormative? My guess is that they are. And my assumption is that if they were “of color” or gay they could have their way. Maybe even if they used union labor the show could go on. You know it’s true.
There’s a simpler answer. Newsom is pushing a number of unpassable or insignificant laws to create the illusion that he’s not a tyrant when he makes his 2024 run
Rotary.
Serious question: If a jaywalker gets hit crossing in the middle of the block, is the driver at fault? Also, how about the driver’s future mental state? Shouldn’t we be concerned about how the driver would feel about this accident?
Please pardon the language. I’m using leftist jargon so everybody understands:
“Screw your mental state, Janet. Just pay the traffic fines, court costs, increased insurance, etc.. We did this for YOUR own good (and because we need more tax dollars to piddle away) now adjust to it.”
A fine is a tax you get for doing poorly (bad),
A tax is a fine you get for doing well (good).