Entitlement mentality: Pedestrian right of way.

In My Humble Opinion
1

First, the question, then the rant.
Actual question: Can anyone explain the history/development of the concept concerning pedestrian right of way over vehicular traffic?

Rant: The “rule” has been around for my entire 62 years. However, as a child I was taught “You NEVER step in front of a moving vehicle even if you KNOW you have the right of way.” This lesson was punctuated with graphic explanations as to what could happen to me if run over by a concrete truck… Then to firmly cement this admonition was the promise of an ass-beating if observed violating this parental mandate. It made sense to me from the onset, so no whuppin’ was ever necessary. Yet it has always perplexed me: Why would I have the right of way in the first place?

As a kid, and to this day as an adult, it seems to me to be a simple matter of physics and situational physiology, not to mention the added incentive of self preservation: A pedestrian has a huge advantage in making correct decisions concerning a potential confrontation with a vehicle. So why do we encourage people to abandon logic and place themselves’ in mortal peril based upon (imo) flawed legislation that promotes stupid action… Because people have the “right”? If so, perhaps that right needs to be rescinded.

2

You may want to disambiguate your question: in my experience, pedestrians do not automatically have right of way; there are “WALK”/“DON’T WALK” traffic lights and zebra crosswalks to control this.

As for the second part, who tries (more than once) or encourages anyone to step in front of a speeding vehicle? Who among us has not seen a car burn through a red light, or a driver give it a little gas when he sees you trying to cross the street?

3

Back in the long ago, rules of traffic as we think of them today didn’t really exist. You don’t see traffic cops in western movies. Horses and buggies went where they wanted, when they wanted. In the biggest cities, traffic sometimes clogged, but horses were pretty maneuverable and speeds were extremely low.

That first changed when trolley cars got introduced. Not the horse-drawn trolleys, but first cable-drawn ones (hence the epithet “traction barons” which puzzled the heck of me in school) and then electric ones starting in the 1890s. These were much faster, much harder to slow down, and not steerable off their tracks (or overhead wires). People died because they treated them like horses which would just get out of the way. The Brooklyn Dodgers got the name Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers all the way back in 1895; that was a joke that was no joke.

Automobiles obviously got introduced around the same time. They kept getting faster and more numerous and went wherever they felt like instead of staying on obvious tracks. More people died. Really, lots of people. Survivors got fed up and started screaming for safety measures. Traffic lights and then stop signs (again, really, in that order) were the rage in the nineteen teens, making tens of thousands of corner traffic cops unemployed, in an interesting and mostly unknown early incident of technological obsolescence.

Cities then started passing laws regulating pedestrians as well. Jaywalking, even as a term, was a thing unknown in the 19th century. Etymology places it in the early 20th. Pedestrian crosswalks appeared and police started ticketing people for walking across streets in the middle of a block, a development that would have baffled earlier cultures. The flip side of that was that if pedestrians crossed where cities prominently designated “only here” crosswalks, they needed some legal protection. Hence, pedestrians got the legal right of way.

That’s not an all-powerful amulet. Drivers still drove over pedestrians even on crosswalks. “Look both ways” is plain common sense. But people on foot don’t have more plain common sense than people behind the wheel. So a legal structure was created to assign guilt, making a driver hitting a pedestrian in a crosswalk automatically at fault, just as running into the back of someone else’s car is automatically presumed to be your fault. Right of way elsewhere than designated crossings is probably defined city-by-city.

Only took a few decades and many thousands of deaths, but as Churchill said, Americans always do the right thing, after trying everything else.

4

It seems the OP was told that the pedestrian always has the right of way. That’s a myth.

5

Sometimes, a variety of common sense is elevated above the law.

As one example, if a guy holds up a knife and says, “Give me your money,” you give him your money. You have the law on your side if you tell him no…but he has the knife.

A pedestrian in a crosswalk has the right of way, and if a car hits him or her, the driver is at fault. Meanwhile, the pedestrian has a bust leg.

Something similar applies when “power must yield to sail.” I once watched an amateur regatta of little sailboats hold up a big Italian cargo container ship. The ship’s officers were mad, blowing their horn in bursts of five blasts. (“Emergency.”) But the guys in their sailboats ignored it cheerily. They knew they were perfectly safe!

6

Not always.

Even when the pedestrian has the right of way, that’s not necessarily true.

7

Cite for both statements? If that ever was the case, it’s not now. One is not “automatically” at fault in either scenario.

8

My grandfather used to recite a little poem he learned while sailing in a time when sailboats had the right of way over power craft:

Here lies the body of Michael O’Day
Who died while observing the right of way.
He was right–dead right–as he sailed along,
But he’s just as dead now as if he’d been wrong.

9

In many states pedestrians do have the right of way at any crosswalk, marked or not. It may not be always, but so what? It’s only been in the last hundred years of human history that a pedestrian’s right to be in the street has been any less than 100%.

The term jaywalking was invented by automobile associations/lobbying groups as part of a propaganda campaign starting in the 1910s to redefine streets as a place not for people, bikes, carts, etc., but for motor vehicles and nothing else. Sadly they pretty well succeeded, and we’re only barely aware of how artificial and destructive such a mindset is.

10

There is nothing disambiguous here. In an effort to clarify my question for you: Why would a person step into the path of an oncoming vehicle when the result may end in the harm of the transgressor of logic, irrespective of jurisprudence?

As for your “second part”… The legal system encourages people to step in front of moving vehicles. Folks running red lights or gassing crosswalkers is immaterial.:smack:

11

There is ambiguity in your OP. It seems as all three questions are made with the assumption that the pedestrian always has the right of way.

How so?

12

Don’t sailing vessels still have right of way over power craft? The usual rule, on water as well as land, was that (all other things being equal, there being no other rule that supersedes this one) was that a person not enhanced by any kind of vehicle (boat, bike, car, anything) has right of way over any kind of vehicle; and a vehicle powered by human power only (rowboat, bicycle) has right of way over a powered vehicle.

I remember a PSA from back when I was a kid (50s or 60s) that was similar to that rhyme, but directed at pedestrians and traffic - something about you can be in the right, but it’s no good being dead right, so watch out for traffic.

Anyway, I thought this thread was going to be about pedestrians who ignore pedestrian traffic signals and signs and practically dare you (the driver of a car) to hit them or honk at them. Of course they only do that when you’re traveling slowly enough to actually stop, because they aren’t really stupid, they just have this entitlement feeling that cars are bad and should have to stop even if they have the legal right of way. (In my city, there is also a minority contingent of homeless people who just wander into the street regardless of signals.)

My related rant is for those pedestrians who ignore the pedestrian signals and who start to cross on the auto’s yellow light because they really believe they have the legal right to do that. We have those countdown pedestrian signals in my city, and most folks seem to think it’s perfectly ok for them to start crossing (at their normal speed) when it says 1 or even 0, and that the cars just have to wait for them. If you’re a driver, good luck if you need to make even a right turn when pedestrians are around. One car might make it through per cycle.

13

You assume too much.
Do you drive?
Sorry for the snark, but you seem to be unaware of reality.
I’m not unaware of the legalities of pedestrian rights and restrictions, however as time goes by, pedestrians push their “right” of way to unhealthy ends.

14

This is one of those things that SHOULD be obvious to any Doper, precisely because it is common knowledge. But since you request cites, here you go.

Colorado specifically:

State law in general:

15

I spend a lot of time in Manhattan and you want to talk about pedestrians with a sense of entitlement coupled with a conviction of immortality?? Holy shit. I learned to cross streets in a different environment. I’ve been living in this area since 1984 and there’s still no way I’m stepping blithely out in front of moving vehicles without a glance like the Manhattan natives do.

I’ve been an automobile pilot and I still sit behind the wheel on occasion, and I’m well aware of the limitations of driver observation skills and driver multitasking in a complex environment and it doesn’t get much more complex than city driving. Skinny lanes, lots of cars, badly marked traffic patterns with parked cars cropping up in your lane in any block, very short intervals between traffic lights, no right on red, loud sounds and bright lights and tall buildings, and pedestrians like ants pouring out of an anthill, everywhere.

And in that environment, where the drivers are coping with all that, the pedestrians just step forth without making eye contact or ascertaining that there are no 3000 pound chunks of iron rolling in their direction. Uh uh, not me. I trust me to correct for the drivers a lot more than I trust the drivers to correct for me.

16

I don’t see why else you would ask questions such as the following if you weren’t under the presumption that the pedestrian always has the right of way:

*Can anyone explain the history/development of the concept concerning pedestrian right of way over vehicular traffic?

Yet it has always perplexed me: Why would I have the right of way in the first place?

So why do we encourage people to abandon logic and place themselves’ in mortal peril based upon (imo) flawed legislation that promotes stupid action… Because people have the “right”?*

It would be easier to help you get the answers you’re looking for if you would answer the question I asked in post 11.

17

You did not produce cites that pedestrians always have the right of way. Actually, your cites prove the opposite:

When traffic control signals are not in place or not in operation, the driver of a vehicle shall yield the right-of-way

Since a particular scenario is mentioned, this means that the driver does not always have to yield the right of way.

*Nineteen states require a motorist to yield when a pedestrian is upon any portion of the roadway. *
Which means it’s not the case in 31 states.

18

I recently took an auto trip from Seattle 101/ thru Cali 1 to San Francisco. From a Midwest perspective… Trust me, SF has it in spades from this notion. Seattle pedestrians act in a retarded manner compared to SF.:slight_smile: Seattle finds it necessary to remind it’s citizens on bulletin boards to not step in front of moving vehicles.

19

Our British posters can weigh in, but I believe that automobiles have the right of way in Blighty.

Regarding right of way in the US–yes, these laws vary by state, to the perpetual confusion of foreigners as well as Americans. I lived in Manhattan for a long time, where whatever the law pedestrians crowd as far as they can into the road to dash across during the briefest of intervals. I loved it.

I now live in SoCal, were the LA cops will sometimes ticket you for setting foot in a crosswalk the moment the white “walk” signal turns to orange. I’ve had it happen.

It’s a question of local priorities, obviously, but seriously, fuck cars.

20

@gogogophers: if I have correctly understood your question as, “Why do we encourage people to cross the street when they have a green light even when an oncoming vehicle can’t or won’t stop,” I doubt we do. The message to kids is still “look both ways before crossing the street.”

Granted, I expect cars to stop normally when I am a pedestrian, but I am not going to stand in the middle of the road and play chicken if one doesn’t, and (IME) no one has suggested I should.