Some Teeth for Crosswalk Laws

The pedestrian and the driver. Too often, in either of these roles, we ignore crosswalk safety--striding heedlessly across a street or zooming past crossing pedestrians. In Glendale recently, some expensive tickets provided drivers with a strong reminder of the law.

Troubled that three-fourths of the city’s traffic fatalities were pedestrians in crosswalks, police last week mounted a two-hour crackdown on motorists who failed to stop for pedestrians at a crosswalk on busy Brand Boulevard. The 37 cited motorists may have felt set up by the plainclothes police decoy who stepped into the crosswalks, but their failure to yield was clearly against the law and counter to good sense. The fine was a stiff $103.

The idea for the crackdown arose a year and a half ago when an officer stopped a jaywalker and told her to use the crosswalk; he was horrified to see that when she did, a car almost hit her.

Jaywalking of course is life-endangering (how many times have we been too lazy or rushed to walk a few yards farther to a crosswalk?), and jaywalkers are often deservedly ticketed. But pedestrians in legal crosswalks are all too vulnerable to speeding motorists. Statewide, 6,210 were injured or killed while using crosswalks in 1995, according to the California Highway Patrol. It shouldn’t take the specter of a ticket for drivers to yield to pedestrians. Even so, police in other Southern California cities should take a tip from Glendale and crack down on crosswalk scofflaws.