Self-Driving Cars Could Make Jaywalking Legal- Is Jaywalking Not Legal?
A report released this week from the National Association of City Transportation Officials, a nonprofit representing cities on transportation issues, lays out a vision for the future of city streets as autonomous vehicles arrive. Some cities look to NACTO for recommendations, but it's unclear if cities will adopt its guidance.
The blueprint suggests generally limiting self-driving vehicles to 20 mph and allowing pedestrians to cross streets anywhere, rather than only at intersection crosswalks. The speed restriction would be a noticeable decline in top speeds in many cities. This may extend trip times in vehicles.
Pretty interesting article, basically offering up the opinion that as we see the rise of -WAIT, jaywalking isn’t legal?
WHAT? It has to be legal; do people still get tickets for jaywalking? I just assumed that it was one of those things that if you did it and got hit by a car that you couldn’t press charges, or if you died that your family wasn’t allowed to start a blood feud with the driver’s family- i had no idea it was still a law.
Is this even enforced at all in New York? I mean, I openly walk down the street with my back to traffic when I’m in Koreatown, basically daring one-eyed cabbies to hit me (that’s a rage filled blog for another day), and it’s not because I have a death wish; I just want to avoid the sidewalk, and I’ve never been arrested.
An underrated part of this article is that boy scouts used to reprimand people for jaywalking, are you fucking kidding me? I can’t imagine some snot-nosed, uniform-wearing teacher’s pet, brown-nosing the constitution and handing me a slip of paper telling me that my behavior is dangerous. No shit my behavior is dangerous, but I’d rather die in the street, mangled underneath a cable car, then wait for the light to turn like a sheep.
In fact, if you walk on the sidewalks of New York you have a more miserable existence than someone who doesn’t. It’s like looking behind the curtain of the matrix, suddenly everything goes faster: you can hack the system, you can get anywhere in half the time. Once you get a taste of the life, you can’t go back.
So to each their own. Do I respect those who wait for the signal to cross the street? Sure. Do I understand it? Maybe. Can I relate? Absolutely not! Some days I’ll wait for the light to turn just because I want to remember what it felt like to move at the pace of a decrepit snail. But no way should this ever be enforced. Let me be clear: to the Boy Scouts of America, you can keep your pink slips right where you keep your quadruple sailor knots, because I’ll either get to the deli thirty seconds faster or I’ll die trying.
P.S. If I get hit by a car after writing this, I deserve it. And I also demand that my family start a blood feud.
