NJ state law says that motorists must yield to pedestrians at marked crosswalks.
Most towns don’t really do much about it, but Princeton is quite active in this field (being a college town it makes sense).
They erected great big flashing signs at the crossings where runners and bikers along the Delaware & Raritan Canal towpath cross the main roads into town. I often run on that trail, so I frequently use the signals. You press a button and orange flashing lights embedded in the roadway light up, as well as the signs on either side.
One day last year I was driving my family to church and was about to cross one of those towpath crosswalks when the flashers went on. I saw a mother with a stroller and children about to cross, so I stopped. I was shocked as I heard shrieking tires and saw the image of a workman’s pickup truck sliding sideways at me in my rearview. He didn’t hit us, though we were all shaken up..
After the family crossed, I went into town. The pickup truck began following me, about six inches off my bumper, and revving his engine, closing in and backing off over and over. I started turning onto side roads and he followed me. After my third turn, I was certain that he really was following me, ready to have a full-on road-rage incident, so I told my family “all right, we are going to drive to the police station”
But then he suddenly pulled off as I went straight. I’m glad he didn’t find me. It’s a shame he got so furious at someone who stopped for big bright lights that were all over the roadway. Did he want to kill the nice lady and her children?
I disagree! A pedestrian might be out in -20 or +100 temperature or rain while the guy in the car is his nice weather-controlled cocoon. Also, we were here first. Last July I was on a train that was held up for 10 minutes by a small boat that had the right-of-way (on a turnbridge) because “boats were here first”.
Now, no driver in Montreal has ever heard of a pedestrian crosswalk. They exist, probably since 1980, but they were just put there and there was no driver education program to inform drivers what they meant. Also there is absolutely no enforcement. So I have gotten into the habit of stepping off the curb as the last car in a line approaches ready to get across before traffic resumes. But I have to be careful not to try this on the west coast because that car is likely to come screeching to a halt, embarrassing me.
The other place I have to be careful is in England because cars turning with a traffic light have absolute priority over pedestrians crossing with the light. When I asked an Englishman last summer if this were really true he expressed astonishment that the pedestrian could ever–save at a marked pedestrian crossing–have priority over a vehicle. I think this traces back to a class system in which the lower classes walked and the upper classes rode carriages.
Having lived in Ann Arbor oin Northside, I am very familiar with the Plymouth Road problem - it’s an area of high speed, high density traffic where pedestrians are killed with some regularity . I read in the Ann Arbor news, that even with the law only around 2% of drivers on Plymouth Rd. stopped for pedestrians in the crosswalks.
Over the years there have been numerous proposals to remedy the issue. From larger, grassy medians to traffic signals to overpass bridges. Interesting that of all those, the one that actually came to fruition is a law that applies everywhere and not just in the problem area. At any rate, the ordinance is generally held to be ineffective for solving the problem it’s meant to address.
In addition to the fact that the cars are going around 45mph, Plymouth Rd, while level, is fairly curved in parts, which makes me question whether there is really safe stoping distance.
By the way, in that same article linked above, Ann Arbor Police Chief Jones seems to express some hesitation about whether the ordinance is safe and enforcable:
Jones noted he stopped for a pedestrian at a crosswalk recently and it caused a lot of commotion and he almost wound up being rear-ended by the driver behind him.
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Well, in the UK drivers don’t legally have to stop until the pedestrian has actually set foot on the crossing. One of many cites. I always thought that they had to stop for pedestrians waiting to cross at a zebra crossing, but apparently this isn’t true.
But you do have to actually stop then, as soon as they’ve put a foot on the road. And you HAVE to stop at a red light (for the driver) at a pedestrian crossing.
In the UK, pedestrian crossings aren’t at places where cars would (or should) be going really fast. They’re near junctions, roundabouts, and in areas where the speed limit is low anyway.
When visiting America I was surprised that the ‘walk’ signals actually meant ‘walk, if the drivers feel like it.’ There didn’t seem to be any traffic signals which ever gave priority to people on foot - the cars just kept on going. Eventually, especially in NYC, pedestrians would just walk out in front of cars.
Do you have a cite for that? I don’t think that’s true.
Neither do I. A car turning at a traffic light is by all logical thinking driving through a stop light and should give way to other road users including pedestrians.
There are studies that show that rear-end collisions do not increase drastically with the installation of pedestrian safety devices - in fact safety can actually increase. I am guessing that this is because folks can see a warning light activating above or to the side of the roadway and so they know the reason why the person ahead of them is stopping??? I found a study on this site:
Here is an excerpt (the HAWK is a type of pedestrian signal device):
From the evaluation that considered data for 21 HAWK sites (treatment sites) and 102 unsignalized intersections (reference group), the following changes in crashes were found after the HAWK was installed: a 29 percent reduction in total crashes (statistically significant), a 15 percent reduction in severe crashes (not statistically significant), and a 69 percent reduction in pedestrian crashes (statistically significant).
So, perhaps crossing lights can help reduce rear-end collisions?
Ann Arbor refuses to add more traffic signals on Plymouth Rd. There is no other place in Ann Arbor where stopping for pedestrians is a problem - because everywhere esle, the traffic is not moving 45-50mph, and there are more than enough signaled pedestrian crossings. Ann Arbor is actually very pedestrian friendly in the central area. The problem area is outside the city center in an area that as recently as 1990 was mostly undeveloped.
What they actually need to do is
a)enforce a speed limit under 40mph on Plymouth Rd (O, the wailing and gnashing of teeth this will cause!)
or
b)Build some pedestrian overpasses
Unfortunately, those cost money whereas optimistic city ordinances the police have no intention of enforcing are effectively free.
A friend of mine had 3 penalty points put on his licence for not stopping when someone was waiting to cross, although he actually sped up at the time to ‘beat’ the pedestrian to that bit of tarmac so I guess he was fined for driving without due care.
In China people would often walk out on pedestrian crossings that crossed four lane highways, without really looking at the (heavy) traffic. I was surprised as the laws of the road were not followed as strictly as in my home country IME, but it turned out if there was a collision the driver would automatically have to pay for the pedestrian’s health costs. A good deterrent, it seemed.
What percentage of crosswalks come equipped with warning lights? I’ve never seen one in any of the states I drive in (NH/MA/ME primarily). Only crosswalks at signal controlled intersections have any sort of lights at all.
The implication in this article, is that the problem isn’t improper behavior in crosswalks, but the paucity of crosswalks. They discuss the specific case of a woman that jaywalked with her children because the nearest crosswalk was 1/3 of a mile away and her apartment was right across the road.
I live in the city listed as the worst for walkers and it isn’t any picnic for drivers either when you are dealing with poorly lit 7 lane highways with no median. I come close to hitting pedestrians at night myself. I only saw them because they were silhouetted by the lights of oncoming cars. Some properly marked and lit crosswalks would be great.