Seen in Lowell
If crosswalks are located hundreds of feet from where people need them, or if drivers are going too fast to stop for people in crosswalks, you might think safety improvements are needed. But as State House News Service reports, a Worcester state senator is trying to raise the fine for crossing the street outside of painted crosswalks:
Astounded that the fine for jaywalking is $1 and convinced that cutting down on the behavior would increase pedestrian safety, Senate Majority Leader Harriette Chandler on Wednesday asked lawmakers to increase penalties for errant street-crossing. […]
The Worcester Democrat said she was motivated to act after pedestrian deaths in Main South in Worcester and was surprised to see how little the fine is for crossing the street illegally.
One small problem: Other than a young boy who darted between cars (scofflaw!) and was hit, the people killed in Worcester were obeying the law:
Even [if you obey the law], there is no guarantee your life is safe. And what about instances when there is no crosswalk where there should have been? That appears to have been the case in the death of Janet Graham, the 72-year-old woman who was hit by a car Monday, Nov. 3 on Lincoln Street. That road had been under reconstruction, and according to people in the area the crosswalk that was typically in place had not yet been repainted. There have been other instances where pedestrians have been struck while clearly within a marked crosswalk.
Much of the misunderstanding is fueled by the fact that the people in power mostly drive, while people who walk for transportation often do so because they can’t afford a car – exactly the type of people politicians don’t listen to.
Police often talk about pedestrian crashes with detached confusion, as if they’d suddenly been asked to do play-by-play for Olympic water polo.
The danger for people walking becomes even more acute in the winter, when most communities either don’t require the shoveling of sidewalks & crossings or don’t enforce their laws.
As Tom Vanderbilt writes for Slate, targeting “jaywalking” doesn’t make anyone safer:
As the Surface Transportation Policy Project points out, “a cursory glance at state and national statistics reveals a substantial number of pedestrian fatalities occur outside a crosswalk. Yet a closer look at national data shows that 59 percent of pedestrian deaths for which location information was recorded happened in places where pedestrians had no convenient access to a crosswalk. While jaywalking is often cited as a cause of pedestrian accidents, less than 20 percent of fatalities occurred where a pedestrian was crossing outside an easily available crosswalk.” And police, who largely tend to be in vehicles, often misinterpret such subtleties or exhibit a pronounced pro-driver bias. And so it’s not uncommon to hear statements like he “came out of nowhere,” when in fact the pedestrian was crossing legally. In many cases, the pedestrian is no longer around to offer a rebuttal.
The very word jaywalk is an interesting—and not historically neutral—one. Originally an insult against bumptious “jays” from the country who ineptly gamboled on city sidewalks, it was taken up by a coalition of pro-automobile interests in the 1920s, notes historian Peter D. Norton in his book Fighting Traffic. “Before the American city could be physically reconstructed to accommodate automobiles, its streets had to be socially reconstructed as places where cars belong,” he writes. “Until then, streets were regarded as public spaces, where practices that endangered or obstructed others (including pedestrians) were disreputable. Motorists’ claim to street space was therefore fragile, subject to restrictions that threatened to negate the advantages of car ownership.” And so, where newspapers like the New York Times once condemned the “slaughter of pedestrians” by cars and defended the right to midblock crossings—and where cities like Cincinnati weighed imposing speed “governors” for cars—after a few decades, the focus of attention had shifted from marauding motorists onto the reckless “jaywalker.”
That pattern continues, and today the word jaywalking is often used as a sort of blanket justification for the dominating presence of cars on city streets. It also reflects a social bias against those people not in cars. (Note this comment in a Federal Highway Administration report: “Still, almost no one can avoid occasional pedestrian status,” as if they were discussing exposure to a venereal disease.) It’s also used to shift blame entirely to the pedestrian when drivers may have had what’s called, in legal parlance, “contributory negligence.” Consider, for example, this case of a driver who killed a pedestrian said to have been crossing outside the crosswalk. The driver was drunk and traveling at least 60 mph on a street whose limit was 30 mph. Statistically (and more-or-less legally), this enters the book as a “jaywalking” fatality, but it was predicated not merely on an illegal crossing but the active contribution of a driver whose reaction time was compromised—and who was traveling at a speed that made the pedestrian’s death much more likely.
A much better plan: Mayor Walsh’s Vision Zero for Boston, which targets ways to make streets safer for everyone without demonizing people walking.
Jaywalking was invented by motor companies to punish people who might get injured by their products, the word “jay” being a term equivalent to “hick” today. It was an attempt to get people to blame the victim, rather than the driver. Read the whole thing here.
…I’m pretty sure it’s legal to cross at corners. As a driver I don’t like people jumping out at me from unexpected places and as a pedestrian I’m pretty conscious of not doing likewise. There should be rules in place for pedestrians on public streets as for any mode of transport, but I’m also inclined to take a no harm, no foul approach to enforcement. Yes, sidewalks should be just as plowed as streets and no, it shouldn’t be the job of abutting residences and businesses to take care of that.
When I’m at the zoo, I expect animals. When I’m at the bowling alley, I expect pins. When I’m driving adjacent to a sidewalk, I expect pedestrians.
See how easy this is?
The cues that tell you how to drive don’t get there by accident. If you design a 4- or 6-lane wide street with wide lanes, no bike lanes, no trees, and few stop lights, you’re signaling to drivers that they’re on the highway & should drive accordingly. Put street parking too close to a crosswalk and you can actively block the view of a driver expecting pedestrians.
street design is tremendously important. And, over time, we’re improving our street infrastructure.
Nevertheless, given that Boston went through ~70 years of Robert Moses-inspired street design that emphasizes fast driving for motorists and to hell with pedestrians and cyclists, and given that it will take another ~70 years to undo all of those cues, you as a driver should adjust. That means that if you’re driving adjacent to a sidewalk (or adjacent to parallel parked cars), you expect a pedestrian. So slow the hell down. 30 mph is the limit, not the minimum, and not the average.
P.S. Yes, I know thegreenmiles is the choir on this one.
…to STAY on the sidewalk when it’s not safe to cross. I expect them to walk on the left when there is no sidewalk per the law. See how easy THAT is? Everybody has to do their part, but I understand you think driving is inherently evil and pedestrians are innocent victims. I’ve never liked your anti-driver attitude.
Cut the crap and grow up.
n/t
At the zoo, do you expect the animals to be let out of their cages?
At the bowling alley, do you expect your pins to jump to the neighboring alley or come flying toward you and/or your ball?
I do my best to avoid driving, but last week I had to drive to work in Copley Square Thursday and Friday. I REALLY encourage you to do that for a few days, and then re-read your comments.
Boston drivers are awful. Boston bikers are worse. Boston pedestrians are simply unforgivable.
You can’t seriously discuss this if you plan to exonerate the pedestrians.
This is a fantastic comment because it perfectly reflects how cities get stuck with mega-highways running down the middle & transit mostly designed to get suburbanites in & out of the city (rather than to help people in the city get around town): Many of the decision-makers think transportation in cities should be designed for people from the suburbs to drive through them as quickly as possible, regardless that’s best for the people living in the cities or not.
Copley Square. This is where you expect to be able to speed around without people walking & on bikes in your way. Outta the way, Boston, where 37% of people don’t own a car! JimC’s coming in from the suburbs for the day!
I was using a personal example to make the point, not trying to make this about me. You go ahead and do that though.
Why do you assume I’m speeding? I’m not.
Are there, or are there not, roads that go through Copley Square? Do you want drivers not to use those roads? Fine, but that’s a different discussion.
And by the way, I was not “coming in for the day.” I was going to my job, and I needed to drive for job-essential reasons.
to the occasional bicycles vs. vehicles debates, which very quickly descend into lawless unpredictable cyclists vs. callous, murderous motorists speeding around downtown streets at 50mph.
I think people get emotional about these things because everyone has had a viscerally frightening experience at one time or another, even if it did not lead to a collision– a cyclist suddenly appearing on the wrong side of the road, or from the wrong end of a one-way street, a car door suddenly opening in the face of a cyclist, or a car passing close enough to brush a cyclist’s elbow.
The aftermath of the adrenaline in all of these code-brown incidents is that people stay very angry at all of those car drivers, cyclists, pedestrians, or whomever it was perceived to be at fault in “their” incident.
I tend to agree that good design– narrower lanes for motor vehicles, bike lanes separated by parked cars from traffic, rotarys, and other “traffic calming” measures– can make these incidents both rarer and less severe. But at the same time, a reality of living in the modern world is that large steel vehicles are moving around at all times at velocities that will do physical harm to people upon impact, that one key to minimizing such incidents is to cause, to the greatest extent possible, things to move in predictable patterns, and that you can’t exempt any one kind of traffic from the responsibility to avoid behaving in unpredictable ways.
The rapid devolution of the discussion to whether a driver was morally justified to be driving a motor vehicle in Copley Square does little to accomplish anything.
I had to do some driving around the Pru on a recent weekend. Based on my experience, I would say that the city has already decided that they do not want drivers to use those roads, at least not in the numbers that were trying to. The delays I encountered were about 10% caused by pedestrians, and 90% caused by double-parking and other less-than-considerate vehicle operation. If I were to repeat that trip, I would definitely use the T. Lesson learned.
As much as I drive to get where I need to be, preferably in a timely fashion, I have also been on tours of Lowell on foot which demonstrate the need for safer and more efficient accommodation of pedestrians. I believe we can and should do both.
I’m sympathetic to the diary’s point, because I walk in Boston a lot. But the social contract works both ways (all three ways in this case).
When one person is standing in the middle of the street and the other is in a one-ton steel box going 35 miles an hour, let’s not pretend all parties are equally at risk.
n/t
…I believe it is the case that when a driver and pedestrian collide, the driver is always considered to be at fault, never mind that it may have been the pedestrian who wasn’t supposed to be there or that the pedestrian unlike the one-ton steel box can jump or stop more quickly.
… the pedestrian is certainly at fault for possible scratching the car and for willfully marring the paint job of the car with smears of blood. And there’s the fact that they ruined an upstanding car owning citizens day. Selfish bastards every last one of them…
In fact, I think that every pedestrian possibly killed by a car shouldn’t be fined $1, but should be charged with attempted suicide. Those who succeed in their suicides should have all assets seized and given to the poor helpless automobile owner they callously and selfishly used to end their pointless lives.
And I think the same ought to be true for any and all cars killed by a pedestr– Oh, wait.
That’s not true. There are myriad laws about who’s at fault when. Read them! What do you think of them? Tell us!
…but then again, it might have been in the context of insurance claims rather than the law.
Lived in Montreal for six years without a car, and loathed the crazy drivers. On occasion I’d rent a car and start loathing the blithe pesestrians.
Berlin is a crowded, thriving, busy, chaotic and energetic city with an ENORMOUS number of people, bikes, cars, buses, and trains.
It is also a city where traveling by train, bus, automobile, bicycle or foot is FAR easier and safer.
Pedestrians and automobiles in Boston do what they do because the STREETS and SIDEWALKS of Boston are so badly designed. We don’t need to “exonerate” pedestrians nor chastise drivers or bikers.
What we DO need to do is recognize that ALL of them exist and accommodate that reality in our urban (and suburban) design and planning.
I was surprised in the German cities of Europe (including Zurich) how people will stand at empty street corners waiting for “walk” lights to change.
Conversely cars do race around side streets where we would have more caution, because they know there’s little chance of running into the random pedestrian.
As for waiting for walk lights I find it mildly annoying when I sit at an intersection where the walk light has been triggered, but nobody actually waited around for it to change. If you are going to go ahead and cross during a break in the traffic I wish there were a way to cancel the walk light request.
It’s still a German city, and the people are almost indistinguishable from their neighbors immediately to the north.
… I have to report that since posting this comment, I nearly was run over at the intersection pictured. It was a by a bike though.
… when posters for the Boston Film Festival highlight our T trains.
Berlinale Posters 2016
When you pick up a gun, expect it to be loaded. It may be, it may not be. You expect it to be loaded because it’s the best way to avoid a catastrophe (shooting someone or yourself) in a situation you can’t control (whether or not somebody else loaded the gun).
Expecting pedestrians is the same thing. I’m not arguing that a pedestrian (be it an able bodied adult, a child, a disabled person, or whomever) should jump out onto the street. What I am arguing is that if the driver expects the pedestrian, then a collision is a hell of a lot less likely. That’s plain ol’ defensive driving. Similarly, of course, peds should expect that there’s a car in the road. Defensive walking I suppose.
The problem with your comment about animals and pins is your explicit claim that pedestrians don’t belong on the pavement. That’s just plain wrong. Peds walk on crosswalks. They walk to and from their parallel parked cars. They cross mid-block if too far from a crosswalk (pssst… that’s legal). They enter and exit buses that couldn’t get close enough to the curb because some other vehicle is parked illegally. And, of course, they walk on the blacktop in ways that are “crossing against the light” or “jaywalking” too.
If you’re on the Mass Pike, no, don’t expect a pedestrian. It’s illegal to be a pedestrian on the Mass Pike, and peds are exceedingly rare. If you’re in an environment with sidewalks though, expect pedestrians, including on the pavement. Because, like it or not, and contrary to our cultural behavior, the blacktop is in fact shared space. And, the reality remains, if you expect a pedestrian, you’re far less likely to kill a pedestrian.
Or it could be written… that if you are a pedestrian you should expect a car when you cross a street and if you expect that car a collision is a lot less likely. If you expect a car when crossing a street, you are much less likely to be killed.
Make you a deal, come down to Copley square any workday between 4 and 6, pick any intersection. Count the number of cars who jump a red light and the number of pedestrians that cross against a light during that time… I will bet you a drink that the there are 10 time the number of pedestrians than cars. And I bet the number is even higher off hours when there are less cars.
I agree that everyone can do better, but there has to be an expectation that everyone follows some rules. I was glad to see a few weeks ago cops along Berkeley Street at the corners writing down tags of people that jumped a red light and, hopefully, ones blocking the box.
The issue is pedestrians and bicyclists will lose more than just money when up against a car.
Maybe we should go the way of downtown Vegas, you never cross a street, is is all pedestrian overpasses? Yes, I am kidding!
That’s actually not a bad idea, at least at places likely to have high foot traffic.
I sometimes think all the crosswalks and sidewalks near Lowell High School should be underground. Those kids have no idea.
Because why shouldn’t pedestrians have to either climb a flight of stairs or walk an extra 100 yards (fn 1) just to cross a street, lest all those pedestrains inconvenience motorists?
fn 1. 12:1 slope ratio is the minimum ADA. So you need a 15′ gain, and you’ve got to go up and down. 15 x 12 x 2 = 360 feet = 120 yards.
…just cut through private property if it’s faster and avoids a red light? Really, there are places cars are restricted to, places bikes are restricted to, and places peds are restricted to. I get that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but that’s not always feasible. In case you’re wondering it’s attitude like this that makes be call you anti-driver. We can still have at-grade accessibility for those who require it.
So rather than take the view that pedestrians are trespassing on the blacktop when they cross the street, why not take the view that it is automobiles that are permitted to drive across crosswalks on a restricted basis? Fundamentally, it’s the same concept. Our existing laws match both views equally.
There is shared space at intersections, because two distinct user groups have routes that are in conflict. We have rules dictating who can use what when. The laws, as written, work like this (in order):
1. An auto never has permission to hit or use his vehicle to intimidate a pedestrian.
2. If a ped has a “walk” or a flashing “don’t walk”, the ped may cross.
3. If the auto has a green light (or arrow), the motorist may proceed, subject to rule (1). Of course, when turning, the motorist must check all crosswalks, typically the two perpendicular crosswalks the auto will pass through.
4. If the auto has a red light and can make a legal turn on red, the motorist may proceed, subject to rule (1). Of course, when turning, the motorist must check all crosswalks, typically the two perpendicular crosswalks the auto will pass through.
You think it’s “not a bad idea” to force those on foot to have to walk an extra 120 yards to cross the street. When I point out how absurd that is, my attitude “makes [you] call [me] anti-driver.”
All I can do is shake my head.
Thankfully, both the users of Boston streets and the Boston decisionmakers don’t see it christopher’s way. My observation is that Boston metro drivers have gotten better with respect to bike/ped/auto interactions in the past 15 years. There remains plenty of room for improvement, but local motorists seem to be doing a better job of expecting pedestrians these days. Simultaneously, DPWs have done a better job of redesigning sidewalks and intersections to make them more friendly for pedestrians, thereby helping motorists expect their two-footed brethren. Narrowing curb-to-curb distances, incorporating leading pedestrian intervals, reducing street furniture clutter near corners, using additional signage, humps, and other physical infrastructure for unsignalized crosswalks (esp. mid-block), etc.
…but maybe instead of anti-driver the better description is pedestrian entitlement. I don’t think it’s any less reasonable to control where pedestrians should cross than it is to control which side of the street we drive on or establishing one-way streets which force drivers to go around an extra block. Yes, it’s not the most convenient for either drivers or walkers, but tough luck.
Nobody on this thread, or any other on BMG I can recall, have argued that pedestrians should have the legal right to cross any street in any location at any time. Nobody.
You’re fighting ghosts.
but this post started with the premise that increasing the fine for illegally crossing the street to more than one dollar was a bad idea.
According to the article
Ans since
How about we start writing tickets to pedestrians that cross against the light or outside a crosswalk for much more than a dollar?
writing a tickets to drivers that jump a red, block the box or block a crosswalk…
…entitled “Why am I not surprised” not dripping with sarcasm, then? That is how I took it, that you were objecting to requiring pedestrians to walk 100 feet or climb over a street to cross.
I didn’t write 100 feet. I wrote 100 yards. 120 yards actually. For each crossing.
Want to walk 8 blocks? Congrats! You get an extra half mile worth of ramps. You know, so folks like christopher and jimc won’t have to wait so long to make his right on red when he drives around Copley.
Tell you what. Why don’t we have motorists press a button every time they want a green light to drive through an intersection. No big deal right? It’s what we have peds do if they want to cross at a crosswalk. I’ll tell you why. Because it’s just as absolutely ridiculous.
My wife and I frequently make JUST THIS COMMENT to each other while we wait an ETERNITY for a walk light at a busy pedestrian intersection like Davis Square, Porter Square, Harvard Square, or innumerable counterparts in downtown Boston.
I don’t know what the current situation in Coolidge Corner is. I know that it was not very many years ago (perhaps five) when, as part of the Beacon Street “redesign”, the light cycles in Coolidge Corner were changed to make pedestrians wait SIGNIFICANTLY longer for crossing light. This is an intersection where a busy Green Line stop is isolated in a wide media, with multiple lanes of Beacon Street traffic on each side. Pedestrians complained that they missed trains because they were unable to get across the traffic before the waiting train closed its doors and left.
The explanation from the town “planners” was that the light timing was changed to “smooth” traffic flow on Beacon Street and avoid traffic “congestion” at Coolidge Corner.
A “city” is, pretty much by construction, a place where the people-density is very high. It is absurd that we STILL do traffic “planning” in a way that punishes people (many or most of whom who live and pay taxes in the neighborhoods in question) in favor of vehicles (carrying people who are almost always going “somewhere else”).
you start at the corner to move up the rise…
other options are raise the whole sidewalk, elevators and stairs at the corner, ramp goes from corner to corner, some combination…
I personally don’t like the idea, but stating it has to be an additional 120yards to cross the road is false.
And yet, which of these regularly kill people?
n/t
Bicyclists and pedestrians regularly kill people?
Jim, at last someone is telling the truth.
Last week a Lowell teenager brutally assaulted a man in a pickup truck who crossed to the wrong side of the street and onto the opposite sidewalk where the teen was riding his bicycle.
It illegal to ride a bicycle on the sidewalk. Furthermore according to police the driver tried to escape from the boy but the bicycle was so violently lodged beneath the truck that it followed him for a mile.
Maybe you think this is not such a big deal, because nobody died. This time.
But a few years ago in my town a woman crossing the street recklessly struck a car that was minding its own business on a road where it had every right to be.
The woman was in a crosswalk in the middle of the road and was no kid—she was 77 years old and knew exactly what she was doing. Heck,l she used a walker in her assault. I’m sure she would have faced charges had she lived.
More recently a 91 year old man who was also in a crosswalk (see a pattern here?) violently attacked a motor vehicle proceeding lawfully down the same street in broad daylight. He did real damage to the car and traumatized the driver.
This sort of thing has been going on for years in my town and elsewhere (see this report) and nobody does anything about it.
So thank you, Jim, for courageously pointing the finger at these killer pedestrians and cyclists when everybody else is blaming the real victims. And for proving how apt the title of this diary truly is.
Believe me, I’d love out of this thread. But I can’t respond to sarcasm, and I can’t back away from anything I said.
“All three,” yes, because all three groups are people.
Driving is Boston is occasionally necessary and simply AWFUL. As noted, I agree with the diary’s point. I just reacted to stomv’s “I expect animals at the zoo” comment. It is just absurd to discuss this and pin it all on the drivers. The drivers are horrific, yes, but the pedestrians do some seriously crazy shit. I literally saw a guy run through three lanes of traffic today on Clarendon Street. He ran because the light was changing, but not all the cars had started moving.
Everyone seems to pretend that every single motorist is so callous and inhuman that they really do not care at all if some oblivious twit wanders out into traffic with his face in his phone and his ears behind headphones, or appears on a bicycle on the wrong side of the road, and the twit winds up injured or dead on account of impact with the driver’s vehicle. I lived on Beacon Hill for long enough to see both of these scenarios happen dozens of times a day, every single day. The only reasons there aren’t more dead twits is because most drivers are careful enough to save them from their gross stupidity, and pure dumb luck.
I am all for redesigning urban infrastructure to better accommodate all traffic, but as pointed out elsewhere, that its a process of many decades. In the present, I simply do not understand why it is such an affront to suggest that traffic other than motor vehicles should probably behave in predictable ways–always producing a sanctimonious lecture about the morality of driving rather than waiting for a bus.
Find one post where folks are arguing that pedestrians (or cyclists for that matter) should dash across three lanes of Clarendon or wander into traffic face-in-phone. You (to a lesser extent) and jimc and christopher (to a greater extent) are arguing a straw man.
Nobody is arguing that pedestrians, to a person, behave according to the law or behave sensibly 100 percent of the time, or that auto drivers behave terribly 100 percent of the time.
The point is expectations. Expect mistakes or bad decisions by other actors (using all three modes of transportation) because, simply put, it happens. When an erratic or dangerous action does happen, expecting it reduces the chance of catastrophe, regardless of fault.
Why is it so offensive to some folks on this thread to point out that motorists should expect pedestrians to sometimes do unpredictable and/or unsafe things in an area where pedestrians typically congregate? I mean, we all (drivers, cyclists, and peds) fully expect motorists to occasionally do unbelievably dangerous, foolish, or selfish things when near a road — and we (usually) adjust our behavior accordingly.
Is an indignant response to the suggestion that pedestrians who wander out into traffic should be the subject of traffic enforcement. What a pernicious notion!
Nobody has argued that folks who cross against the light or cross away from a crosswalk shouldn’t get a ticket. Find me one comment on this thread that argues for the elimination of pedestrian laws, or for not enforcing them.
Just one.
That fines for jaywalking and crossing against a light should be increased from $1?
I agree that cars should be aware of pedestrians coming out where they are not supposed to, matter of fact there would be a lot more dead pedestrians if they were now aware.
Indeed, it does take many decades. In my view, that’s why it is SO important to do the right thing when we rebuild major areas TODAY.
In that context, I call your attention to:
– The entire Fort Point neighborhood, in the midst of VERY EXPENSIVE rebuilding into an up-scale “destination”.
– The entire swath of surface created when the Central Artery was removed
– The sparkling new equally shi-shi Assembly Square rebuild so loudly touted as a success by my own town of Somerville
NONE of these expensive redevelopments are doing ANYTHING to address this issue. No provisions for bikes beyond painting lethal “bike lanes” that squeeze bikers between fast-moving traffic and long lines of parked cars — virtually guaranteeing that bikers will be doored. No provisions for pedestrians. No provisions for public transportation, beyond building a big glitzy edifice for the Orange Line — that is IMPOSSIBLE to get to except by car!
The vibrant, thriving, sustainable, livable neighborhoods that we seek only happen when people WANT to live, play, work, visit, entertain, and just BE in them. That means that we must strike a balance among all these factors. Modern cities like Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Prague, Salzburg, Innsbruck, and a host of others accomplish this. Boston fails miserably.
The challenges we face are no greater than the challenges faced by any of those cities. Our striking failure seems to me to therefore be a result of ATTITUDES that we must change.
These are BRAND NEW developments that will not be revisited for decades. That’s why we need to change our attitudes NOW.
for jaywalking, it might be well to think about the fact that in this state, most of us have never been taught not to jaywalk. Why not try a program of education and perhaps police warnings not to jaywalk before jumping to the club of increased fines?
I recall being taught precisely these things in elementary school, along with any number of other rules to follow about safety while out and about. We were taught walk on the left (if no sidewalk), bike on the right, that bikes should adhere to all traffic lights and stop signs, that we should walk bikes across streets (I almost never actually see that.), that we should cross on foot at designated crosswalks or corners. We were taught about wearing helmets and seatbelts and even using our hands to signal intent to brake or turn when riding a bike.
This comment should not be construed either way as an argument about the fine amount, which I’ve always seen as mostly symbolic, but apparently my experience regarding exposure to the rules is very different from yours.
Of course, I could be one of those scofflaws, but I’m not. I wore seatbelts even when they weren’t the law, and also signal faithfully, including lane changes and into my driveway. When was the last time you saw traffic enforcement speak to someone for jaywalking, or lane changes without signaling? My comment wasn’t only about exposure to the rules, it was about a day to day reminder that they are the rules and we will make an effort to enforce it. Just telling you in school and never saying another word about it my work for some of us, but not most.
…so it’s very possible things changed. I don’t remember lots of details of the circumstances of learning this, but it feels like the kind of thing I have “always known”. In my case it was probably reinforced in Cub/Boy Scouts too.
Boo. NYC DoT pub service ad here