Cities throughout California have been upgrading their pedestrian signals to modern “countdown” style displays. You have probably seen them: They show the amount of time remaining for a pedestrian to cross the street. Studies confirm that countdown signals are effective for reducing collisions, because pedestrians know when it is safe to begin crossing.
Unfortunately, California law has not kept up with this new technology. CVC 21456, the “jaywalking” law, was enacted back in 1981. In those days, there was no countdown, just a flashing hand. As a result, there is a lot of confusion about when a pedestrian is permitted to cross:
The countdown begins when the “hand” on the signal switches from white to a blinking red and the timer starts ticking down toward zero. It seems that California law says you’re not allowed to set foot in the street once the “Don’t Walk” signal or the red hand begins flashing, even if there is still plenty of time on the countdown.
Well, who knew that? Many pedestrians assume — wrongly, it turns out — that the countdown is designed to tell you how much time you have to clear the intersection so you can make an informed decision on whether to cross the street or wait. “Fifteen seconds? I can make it if I walk fast.” “Five seconds? I’ll wait until the next cycle.”
In most cities, police are taking a common-sense approach to the countdown signals. They will only give a ticket if a pedestrian crosses against the solid-hand phase.
One big exception is the city of Los Angeles.
The LA police department has giving citations for jaywalking, especially in the crowded downtown area, to pedestrians crossing during the countdown phase:
A Downtown News story last week reported that Los Angeles police officers have been ticketing jaywalkers in the city’s historic core and the financial district. Penalties range from a hefty $190 to an even heftier $250. “We’re heavily enforcing pedestrian violations because they’re impeding traffic and causing too many accidents and deaths,” Lt. Lydia Leos told the newspaper.
Fair enough. Pedestrians, like drivers, can be careless — or reckless — and that can be a real safety problem. But what’s causing controversy is that the Los Angeles Police Department is enforcing the letter of the law and ticketing walkers who step into the street during the “countdown.”
This is ridiculous, and it has been going on for years. The Legislature needs to eliminate this ambiguity from CVC 21456. Otherwise, what’s the point of having a countdown signal?
[…] on the Network today: Systemic Failure explains how an outdated California law is giving police more leeway to harass pedestrians. The […]
Rather than calling it a citation they should re-label it as “taxation”. People would be less pissed off about getting “taxed” than getting ticketed. At the very least it would be more honest.
Pedestrians cannot “impede traffic”. Pedestrians ARE traffic.
The laws are wrong.
Why not ticket them if they don’t make it across before it hits zero? That’s not ambiguous at all.
Although I sometimes am still barely in the street when it hits zero, I’ve never blocked traffic (you probably get 5 seconds). A reasonable cop would probably only ticket for pretty big infractions. If you can run, it’s no big deal to cross with only a few seconds left. The problem is when people who are not so fast do so.
Turning traffic that needs to pass through the crosswalk, whether it be left- or right-turning, needs their turn as well. When the red hand starts flashing and the countdown timer starts counting, that gives an opportunity for the pedestrians to clear the crosswalk and for those wishing to turn proceed. Everyone gets their turn.
But then a pedestrian who thinks they can make it decides to cross. Now turning traffic that could have made it through no longer can. In bad cases left-turning lanes can back up.
So I’m in favor of ticketing pedestrians who prevent turning traffic from their turn to proceed. And I say that as a frequent pedestrian who also thinks drivers take liberties that should also be ticketed. I’m tired of the self-centered “me” society.
When the volume get up to where traffic backs up, left had turns usually get their own phase.
Pedestrians and turning vehicles ought to have separate signal phases.
Numerous intersections have separate signal phases for peds and turning vehicles. But for most intersections, that would be overkill and merely serve to lengthen the time to cycle through all phases.
The other issue is that, with the new MUTCD and the longer crossing time – 3.5 ft/sec instead of 4.0 ft/sec (http://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/knowledge/faqs/faq_part4.htm#pcfq4) you have a much longer flashing red time.
Ultimately more pedestrians need to take advantage of the law and gum up the system by challenging each and every ticket through the legal process and force the government to prove guilt. Through the automatic 60 day extension, night court arraignment, trial by declaration, and trial de novo, it will take over a year for tickets to be adjudicated. Maybe judges and commissioners will realize they are wasting too much time on pedestrian offenses and start dismissing tickets, or cops will realize that they need to be on the street and not in the office writing declarations.
Crosswalk counters are often combined with very short white hand phases, so short that only somone standing right next to the curb can get across before a red hand starts flashing. I routinely come across intersections in southern california that have about a 3 sec. white hand phase followed by a very long countdown of 25 seconds. In practice this means that almost everyone enters during the countdown even when you are nearby. Often these are very crowded intersections in which a pedestrian standing a few meters from the edge of the sidewalk may have to wait before entering the street due to crowds. An intersection I routinely use has so much pedestrian traffic that you will probably have to wait until the countdown before you’re able to step onto the street. Remember, we usually have to wait for right turning cars to finish violating our right of way before we begin to cross. In the idiocracy that is southern california, drivers turning right on red seem to believe that they always have the right of way and and some apparentlly think red means go.
My guess is that the traffic engineers who programmed the pedestrian signal probably assumed that this is acceptable and hope that people will be deterred from entering when there is only 10 seconds left. No one imagines that pedestrians will be ticketed for stepping off the sidewalk with 27 seconds still on the clock right after the 3 second white hand phase. However the LAPD seems to think that we should accept living with a mere 3 second white hand phase and at 4 seconds we should be willing to stand there waiting for a 25 second countdown to end and another cycle to begin before we are given our 4 second window to cross. And only if we press a beg button. If we miss the narrow window of oppounity to cross because of cars turning right that’s ok because cars are traffic, people are not.
The commentaries above, probably written by traffic engineering students who hate having to think about pedestrians are an example of the sort of thinking that makes California’s cities unpleasant places to be. Even SF is a fucking horrible place to walk. After living in Munich, Vancouver and Portland I wonder how anyone could tolerate a place as hostile to pedestrians as SF, let alone the rest of the state.
The third rate minds that seem attracted to traffic engineering depts. still refuse to see pedestrians are traffic and legitimate roads users. At best we are a a problem to be tolerated and gotten out of the way as quickly as possible. Anyone who thinks that a dedicated pedestrian phase is “overkill” clearly doesn’t think that the safety and lives of pedestrians are as important as moving cars as quickly as possible. It is damn near impossible to cross the street in this state without having at least one person make a left hand turn come close to hitting me. Just the other day while crossing the street next to a subway station in LA I had two left turning cars pass me at the same time. One in front of me and one from behind and one of them honked at me. That was not the first time this sort of thing has happened.
Do you know what my professors in Urban Planning at the University of Munich called American traffic engineering? Criminal Negligence.
@James, I’m both German (I’ve spent lots of time there too … as a ped) and about as big a bike/ped advocate as you’ll find … but I stand by my comment that a dedicated ped phase would be overkill at most signalized intersections because they are so rarely/lightly used by peds. Now if you make it demand-based (peds push a button or otherwise detected), then it’d be fine. I’m an equal-opportunity overkill designator: a lot of signal phases for vehicles would be overkill too, again, owing to how lightly traveled they are. No point in mindlessly giving over phases to peds or vehicles that aren’t even there. Just being pragmatic and applying some common sense.
[…] Don’t assume that you actually have 19 seconds to cross this intersection. Pedestrian countdown signal via Systemic Failure […]
Along with the countdown is an “upraised hand,” at least in SF County, so the SFPD will give tickets during the countdown as well.
[…] Don’t assume that you actually have 19 seconds to cross this intersection. Pedestrian countdown signal via Systemic Failure […]
Solution: Put red light cameras everywhere and charge massive fines, then use the money collected to close most streets to vehicular traffic except deliveries during limited hours. Provide decent paratransit service to the handicapped. Build pedestrian walkways over or under the remaining vehicular thoroughfares. Enjoy a safer, healthier, happier community.
I like the idea of stepping into the street and proceeding as slowly as possible while still completing the “walk” (barely) within the allotted time.
Holy crap. Tell me about it. I made the mistake of walking my dog across an intersection, just when the hand started flashing. The hand hadn’t stopped flashing by the time we were across. About halfway through the cross walk, a car making a left, stopped in the middle of the intersection to allow me to finish my progress. Then went on it’s way. A motorcycle cop swooped across oncoming traffic, to stop me and issue me a $250 ticket. $250! When I asked about the car that was in the intersection before I was out of the crosswalk, nothing.
Trial by declaration is your friend. https://www.fatwallet.com/forums/arcmessageview.php?catid=52&threadid=1161353#m16616520
How about just obey the law, if you get hit because you choose not to stop walking when the red light is clearly flashing, it will cost you more than $250 and if you are dead your family will have to deal with the burden of burying you for $10,000 or more.
So it seems to me that people would just opt to obey the laws.
The law is flat out stupid. When I’m with my kids at an intersection, I can barely get them safely in the street before the 3 seconds of white hand is up,
[…] seconds in L.A., it is too late to legally set foot in the crosswalk.In a recent post titled “California’s Broken Jaywalking Law,” the Systemic Failure blog explains:California law has not kept up with this new technology. […]