Tag Archives: jaywalking

The Case Against Jaywalking Laws, Part 2

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by Michael Lewyn

Some months ago, I wrote that laws against so-called “jaywalking” (that is, crossing in places other than crosswalks or where traffic lights encourage pedestrians to cross) fail to promote safety, because traffic lights are inadequate guides to safety. When crossing midblock, a pedestrian need only watch out for traffic coming in one direction—right toward her. By contrast, when crossing at a light, a pedestrian may be in less danger from cars coming straight at him, but may be attacked by cars making left and right turns. Moreover, it is not at all clear that jaywalking is a major cause of pedestrian fatalities; although most crashes do occur outside intersections, these crashes often occur in places where there is no easily available crosswalk. According to traffic writer Tom Vanderbilt, “While jaywalking is often cited as a cause of pedestrian accidents, less than 20 percent of fatalities occurred where a pedestrian was crossing outside an easily available crosswalk.” And even where a pedestrian is jaywalking, a crash may be caused primarily by driver misconduct.

However, my article did not fully address the social harms caused by these laws. I did mention that to the extent these laws discourage walking, they increase traffic danger, because more cars mean more potential crashes.

But even if this were not the case, the social benefits of jaywalking laws might be outweighed from their costs. In particular, jaywalking laws are harmful from a public health perspective, a social equity perspective, and a libertarian perspective.

The public health costs from increased driving have been amply discussed in smart growth literature. But just to summarize the key issue, when we drive instead of walk, we create two major types of public health risks. First, we harm ourselves. Less walking means less exercise, which means an elevated risk of many diseases; for example, the risk of type 2 diabetes is 31 percent lower for participants who engaged in regular moderate-intensity physical activity such as walking. Second, people who drive more and walk less endanger the rest of society. Even leaving aside the risks of climate change, particulate matter and other pollutants emitted from motor vehicles create significant costs. For example, one study found that particulate matter emitted from motor vehicles creates $211.6 million of health care costs in Auckland, New Zealand, alone. So, to the extent jaywalking laws reduce walking, they create increased risks of harm for both their intended beneficiaries and for society as a whole. Continue reading →

Highway to Serfdom

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(cross-posted from planetizen.com, with minor modifications)

In “The Road to Serfdom,” F.A. Hayek wrote, “Individual freedom cannot be reconciled with the supremacy of one single purpose to which the whole of society is permanently subordinated.” Hayek was of course thinking about economic planning designed to govern society as a whole. However, his thoughts could just as easily be applied to transportation and land use policy; at all levels of government, 20th-century American land use and transportation planners sought to support “one single purpose to which the whole of society is permanently subordinated”—making cars go as fast as possible. For example, American planners bulldozed city neighborhoods to build highways so that cars could go from downtown to suburbs as rapidly as possible, widened existing roads so that cars could move as rapidly as possible, and limited density everywhere because of concerns about traffic congestion.

Much has been written about whether these policies have achieved their goals; however, it seems to me that even if car-oriented policies have reduced congestion, they may have also led to restrictions on the freedom of nondrivers.

Here’s why: after a few decades of car-oriented policies, driving inevitably became the norm in most of the United States. This alone need not, in theory, restrict the freedom of nondrivers.* However, once driving became the norm, politicians, police officers and prosecutors inevitably began to see walking as abnormal or even dangerous, and as a result have begun to limit pedestrians’ liberty in the name of security.

A very early manifestation of this mentality was anti-jaywalking statutes; in the 1920s, the automobile lobby and its allies persuaded state and local politicians to enact statutes outlawing something called “jaywalking”—that is, walking anywhere except at certain portions of the street (that is, intersections). Even at intersections, pedestrians can only cross streets for a few seconds at a time. Americans supported these statutes because they thought without these limits, pedestrians would not be safe from speeding cars.**

By contrast, drivers have the entire street at their disposal. In the most car-dominated places, police have gone beyond fining pedestrians for this offense; in some places, pedestrians have been arrested for jaywalking, and in others, they have been treated even more harshly. For example, if you are walking with a child at the wrong place or time and the child is hit by a car, you may be prosecuted for manslaughter, on the theory that your jaywalking caused the crash. If your jury is comprised of people who drive everywhere and view walking as abnormal and dangerous, your chances of acquittal are probably not very good.

On the other hand, police (many of whom spend lots of time in cars) and prosecutors tend to treat errant drivers leniently; as long as the state cannot prove a driver did not kill a pedestrian intentionally or after drinking copious amounts of alcohol, a driver who kills a pedestrian is unlikely to receive significant punishment in some jurisdictions. Less serious violations of traffic law are treated even less seriously by government and by the public; for example, I suspect that nearly every American who drives a car violates speed limits on a fairly regular basis.

Jaywalking statutes do at least allow walkers to cross some streets at some points. However, some government officials have gone even further in keeping minor pedestrians off the streets. If government officials view walking as dangerous, a logical step is to limit minors’ access to this activity. And most states have created perfect tools for such limitations, by enacting vague laws prohibiting “neglect” or “endangerment” or children. In some places, if you let your child walk (or even play) outside and anyone sees the child present without you, you can be arrested (and possibly even lose your child) for this offense, if the nearest police officer believes that a child alone is in more danger than a child in her parents’ vehicle. Continue reading →