Tickets Misguided

Despite the fact that I eat like the proverbial horse, smoke and have been known to take a dollop or two, my demise will most likely be because some driver, not me, has broken the law.

While the San Diego Police Department hands out tickets for “that mortal sin, jaywalking” (“San Diego at Large,” Oct. 28), madcap drivers continue to mow down pedestrians with seeming impunity. No, I have not been cited for jaywalking because I usually obey the law. At the same time, I have never, in the 10 years that I have resided downtown, seen a driver ticketed when he breaks the law.

When the light is red for the driver who wants to make a right turn, does he monitor the pedestrians who are legally crossing on the green to his right? Hell, no! He concentrates on the oncoming traffic to his left. What do stop signs and lines mean to the driver? Zilch! He moves across them, blocking the pedestrians’ right of way. To most drivers, the yellow caution light means to speed up and beat the red. Delivery trucks, beer trucks in particular, double park, precluding the pedestrian’s view of oncoming traffic--that is, when they are not parked across crosswalks.

Traffic lights and “walk” signs are limited in their duration and preclude all but the swiftest pedestrians the ability to cross a main artery like Pacific Highway at Broadway or 12th Avenue and C Street. White-cane carriers have no chance at all.

Isn’t it time that the San Diego Police Department lives up to its motto: “To Serve and Protect”? Who needs the protection the most? The pedestrian or the idiot in a two-ton killing machine?

EDWIN O. LEARNARD

San Diego