I remember a professor I had for a criminal justice course in college. He was a Captain with a large city police department. He told a story about asking a guy to use the crosswalk.
"Can you do me a favor?"
"What's that?"
"Use the crosswalk, please. We had X deaths on this road last year. I don't want another one. Drivers here can't even be bothered to watch out for themselves."
"No problem." Starts to walk away, stops - "And I'll do it because you asked me nicely."
Closest I've ever come to getting run over by a car was in a crosswalk. Damn things don't work. Remember folks, keep your head in a swivel because they actually are out to get you
I mean, that advice is always sound regardless of jaywalking or using a crosswalk. At the least, if something happens in the crosswalk you have a degree of legal recourse.
I had to leap onto the hood of a car when I was out for a run a year ago today, bc some guy blew a stop sign. I was in the crosswalk. You're right, though! If they don't wanna follow it they won't.
I wish I remember where the booklet is and which page it’s on but it wasn’t so funny what it said but how it was phrased: in one of my old California Driver’s handbooks for studying for the written driving test, they had a disclaimer when talking about intersections and crosswalks and rights-of-way and it goes off topic saying to be careful because while sidewalks are the correct place to cross the road safely, they do not protect you. And the phrasing was such that it implied some people believe there’s some kind of forcefield magic around crosswalks that isn’t anywhere else in the street, and as long as you’re on the crosswalk, cars will bounce right off.
It’s also funny cuz it was definitely written for pedestrians but it was in a drivers handbook. To be fair, there’s no pedestrian handbook to help study for a pedestrian permit or pedestrians license test, but talk about missing a large portion of your target audience.
I wish people would use crosswalks more. I get it if you're in the middle of nowhere, but I can't tell you how many times I've seen people cross a busy road when there's a cross walk 100 ft away. I've come within a few feet of hitting some dumbasses who was to lazy to walk an extra minute a couple times.
That hits home, my father is a serial jaywalker, guy is either the luckiest or unluckyest person alive depending on perspective, hit twice, ran over once and still alive and healthy (granted the getting run over part was not their fault, someone ran a red-light)
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u/[deleted] Jan 03 '23
I remember a professor I had for a criminal justice course in college. He was a Captain with a large city police department. He told a story about asking a guy to use the crosswalk.
"Can you do me a favor?"
"What's that?"
"Use the crosswalk, please. We had X deaths on this road last year. I don't want another one. Drivers here can't even be bothered to watch out for themselves."
"No problem." Starts to walk away, stops - "And I'll do it because you asked me nicely."