My logic is 'crossing the road is completely reasonable, doesn't harm anyone, people should be allowed to get to the other side of the road'. That logic doesn't follow to speeding, which is dangerous and selfish.
Do you realise it's not a crime in other countries? It's not in the UK and yet we have a lower road-death rate than the US. What are jaywalking laws for anyway?
> My logic is 'crossing the road is completely reasonable, doesn't harm anyone, people should be allowed to get to the other side of the road'. That logic doesn't follow to speeding, which is dangerous and selfish.
Putting oneself in the path of a multi-ton vehicle that doesn't expect you to be there and placing the onus on them to avoid committing vehicular manslaughter when you could use a space explicitly designated for pedestrians is, in fact, dangerous and selfish.
Why is your default that the road belongs to the car in the first place? Why should people need to stick to limited spaces 'designated' for them? How do you think we manage it in the UK without these laws and why do you think our road-death rate is lower?
In the UK, It's not legal to cross a motorway, and non-compliance with the highway code could work against you in a civil court case.
The higher road-death rate in the US might be the reason these laws exist, rather than a symptom of the laws - or are you suggesting that making jaywalking a crime increases road deaths?
>” Why is your default that the road belongs to the car in the first place?”
I’d say it’s because the roads are obviously designed to accommodate automobile traffic. Virtually all modern roads are absolutely designed car-first and it’s apparent that people on-foot aren’t meant to travel on them, except on the sidewalk.
Additionally, a “road” that is only for people and bicycles is typically just called a trail or a path. At least that’s the case where I live. If it’s surrounded by buildings then they call it a plaza.
Cars aren’t fully autonomous yet. There are people in those cars who have just as much right to tax payer funded roads while in a car as they do on their feet.
The deciding factor should be if the law contributes to civil order, or reduces injury.
> There are people in those cars who have just as much right to tax payer funded roads while in a car as they do on their feet.
But you want to ban the pedestrians from the road - you don’t want ‘just as much right’ to the road - you want more right to it. You want the entire length of a block and think pedestrians should just have tiny crossing points.
> The deciding factor should be if the law contributes to civil order, or reduces injury.
As an aside: when I jaywalk, it's because the cars are more predictable than at nearby intersections. Drivers don't always expect pedestrians, and when they start to move when I don't expect, I have no way to predict that or defend myself.
I guess traveling safely is unpopular on HN, just like in SF.
Why stop at a red light or stay in your lane then if there's no other traffic? The rules are in place to keep order and avoid surprises. Sure you can safely cross the street but that doesn't negate the point of the law.
The UK has a much smaller population with more public transit, and the cities like London are so densely packed with slow-moving traffic that it's unlikely to lead to deaths. Comparing metrics without context isn't much of an argument against stopping unsafe crossings.
Do you also agree that "A human being driving around and crossing a red light with some basic looking both ways is not a danger to anyone."?
Cars are driven by people, so it's humans in cars vs humans on foot. Both can create danger to each other. Just because you can safely do something doesn't override the reason and spirit of the law.
Jaywalking is a tiny niche of a massive amount of rules that govern how we interact with each other safely. You're really not going to have a problem jaywalking unless you do it unsafely in the first place, and if you do then there's liability and enforcement ready to apply.
> Do you also agree that "A human being driving around and crossing a red light with some basic looking both ways is not a danger to anyone."?
No.
> Both can create danger to each other.
Absolute nonsense.
The person on foot is no danger to anyone. For example, two people on foot are no danger to each other. It's only when you add a car that there's any danger at all. The entire cause of any danger whatsoever is the car. Therefore it's the car's responsibility to keep things safe and to keep out of people's way.
(Of course if the car isn't given reasonable opportunity to stop then that's the pedestrian's fault - there's always a reasonableness test.)
Basically if a human being wants to cross then of course cars should stop for them, no matter if there's a crossing or not.
The claim is that before cars, Americans (and I assume everybody else in every other country) crossed the road wherever they felt like it. But that they were slow to catch on to the dangers of doing that with cars on the road, and car companies were worried about laws in car owners, so they lobbied for laws restricting where people could legally cross ( https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26073797 ).
«no jaywalking» and «no speeding» are two sides of the effort to maintain the order
Compromise does not satisfy, but dissatisfies everybody; it does not lead to any general fulfillment, but to general frustration; those who try to become everything to all people end up by not being anything to anyone.
I don’t see how they’re two sides to anything? In the UK we have speeding laws but no jaywalking laws. You clearly don’t need both in order to balance or form a compromise.
That's true but Germany also doesn't have speeding laws on their autobahns, and the UK does, so perhaps speeding laws are also crazy? Where does it end?
But yet UK prohibits pedestrians on highways and some other zones and also Occupied Northern Ireland has an offense of «pedestrian through his own negligence on a road endangers his own safety» with obscure «level 3» punishment.