> PEDESTRIAN SAFETY : Do away with some crosswalks
You, like many others, make it sound oh so simple for pedestrians. “Stop and look both ways”. Right. You make it sound like there’s this quiet street and if only I exercised my common sense, I would look to see if a car was coming.
Reality check. Cars are coming, and they are coming thick and fast, in both directions. If I go to use the crosswalk and I see cars coming on both directions, and I believe that they are sufficiently far away to start my walk, I should have a reasonable expectation under the law that they will see me and come to a stop. What has been happening is that pedestrians are halfway across, and one of the leading cars sails right through. This is what the majority of the accidents have consisted of.
I agree, that it’s a highly dangerous expectation, but this is the way the law has been written. In my opinion, there are far too many crosswalks. I believe we should do away with a lot of them, and only have them in critical locations, controlled by traffic lights. Everywhere else should be street crossing done the old fashioned way of simply exercising good judgement without crosswalks.