I can understand wanting to decrease the number of jay walking injuries and death. But pedestrians aren’t solely to blame, it’s the cars that kill the pedestrians. I’m okay with tickets and barriers and other things to decrease the amount of jaywalking, but I would hope that there’d also be efforts to improve the behavior of the car drivers that leads to the accidents. I agree with this article in Gawker, that it’s strange that the thought behind the law for jaywalking is basically this:
Also I can understand why anyone would be confused by being ticketed for jaywalking. I’ve visited New York City a few times, and I remember tons of people jaywalking. Considering the number of pedestrians and the amount of jaywalking currently, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Gawker article is right and terrible crowds and would occur on most corners because people weren’t jaywalking.
OK, again, the jaywalking tickets are specifically targeting the intersection at 96th & Broadway. The deaths that have happened there are completely the fault of the pedestrians. They did not have an orange blinking light. The cars had a green light and the people stepped directly into the path of oncoming traffic. (Both deaths also happened at night.) I know this for a fact because I cross that intersection every single day and know exactly how the light is set up.
That’s a polite drag, especially with all those cameras clicking away.
NBC channel 4 aired the footage they filmed yesterday. They were already at the interection reporting on a death earlier in the day.
You feel bad for him because he is 84, but he isn’t senile or incapacitated. Your own link says “Wong handed the cop his license, but then tried to take it back when the cop started writing him a summons”. Since you brought up “common sense”, how much common sense does one need to have to know that when you are getting ticketed, you don’t take off? That shoving a cop priobably isn’t a good idea? And you don’t wrestle a cop for your license? You try doing that the next time you are getting a ticket and report back on what happens to you. Or are you going to use your common sense and not try and of those tactics?
All day long the cops had been ticketing jaywalking pedestrians and drivers who failed to yield at that intersection.
All day long the cops had been ticketing jaywalking pedestrians and drivers who failed to yield at that intersection.
There was a very funny lady who was on the news yesterday or the day before who had been ticketed at that intersection and said with a totally straight face (and a cop standing nearby) " I’m just thankful we ain’t hit nobody and nobody got killet".
Jaywalking and failure to yield tickets are nothing new. I’ve jaywalked (along with every other New Yorker), but I check for cops first because I do know people who have been ticketed. And there was that time I saw a jaywalker get hit by a bus. People like to sprint into traffic because they are sure they will make it across before the vehicles get to them and never ever stop to think “What if I trip or fall?”. People love to play chicken with traffic, and taxis love to speed up and honk their horn.
He’s lowering speeds in some residential zones, and trying to get the law changed to allow the city to use more traffic-cams (though apparently the latter requires Albany’s support, and so is still being debated). He’s also increasing the number of cops doing traffic enforcement by something like 50%, and some other increased enforcement measures.
By definition jaywalking usually isn’t a priority, and it’s a fact of life here. But you still need to be smart about it and a lot of people aren’t. Looking at this I’m wondering if there isn’t a feedback loop here: are the drivers more aggressive because pedestrians jaywalk at every opportunity? If the drivers feel they have to be aggressive or else they’ll get cut off by jaywalkers, that must make things worse.
It probably depends on where you are. 96th and Broadway is going to be crowded regardless.
Okay, that makes sense. If that intersection is unusually dangerous, it makes sense to issue more jaywalking tickets there, and then maybe people will jaywalk less there, even if they continue to jaywalk at other less dangerous intersections.
Okay, I’m glad to hear that there are improved traffic enforcement measures and changes to traffic law. Hopefully that will help everyoen’s safety.
I agree that people need to be smart about jaywalking. It seems obvious to me that pedestrians need to stay aware. I’ve seen pedestrians do stupid things, which is worrying when I see it when I’m also a pedestrian, and really scary when I see it and I’m a driver. You have a point that there might be a feedback loop, and that might make drivers more aggressive. I don’t know how to combat that, other than enforcement by cops, and maybe making the city more pedestrian friendly. If cars are often impeded by pedestrians, and that makes their travel take too long, then maybe some more people will start walking more instead of taking cars, which might help traffic.
Tourists cause sidewalk crowding. They walk slowly; and three, four and five across. That backs things up. Way up. Not letting New Yorkers run free being the cause of terrible crowds on sidewalks is laughable. That reads like an Onion piece.
Most New Yorkers don’t think waiting applies to them. Everything here is fast. No one wants to wait at an intersection. If there is a 3 second break in traffic, you are hardwired to make a run for it like a gazelle.
It’s a sad fact that the herd gets thinnned sometimes, but pedestrian vehicle accidents cost the city a lot of money. Intersections and blocks have to be closed entirely or one lane only if there is more than one lane. Things come to a halt. People lose money. The city loses money.
His cheek is cut. His head was fine. Old people have very thin skin that damages easily.
I’m not 84, but I have been dragged many times. It’s been a while, but the dead drag is the absolute worst. Especially if you are being heaved into a trunk or a box. No matter how much padding there is, you are guaranteed a bruise. Real trunks are better than trunks on a platform because the car has some give, but unfortunately unless it’s a long shot no one wants to see the dead hooker/housewife/mom/witness/co-ed bounce when she gets dropped. Kidnap/Struggle drags are ok, but under armpit holds can hurt if you aren’t fully clothed. Rescue drags are fun, usually because the guy is good looking and built. If you have to be dragged, it may as well be by a hot guy. Tip: Don’t ever agree to be dragged barefoot on an old barn floor. Since he has on a North Face jacket, I’d say he was well padded. I don’t want to bore you with all my dragging experiences, but I feel pretty confident in saying that drag didn’t hurt.
Nonsense. He was speaking plain fact. It is not realistic to expect people to learn a new language after a certain age. Certain individuals might have the talent, or the education, or the time, or the resources to manage it, but in the aggregate, most non-English speakers of a certain age are not going to learn English very eel or sometimes at all.
