Streetsblog has written a lot of posts about why jaywalking laws are a problem. CalBike has a good list of reasons to get rid of them on its website, including that jaywalking laws were created in the first place to get people out of the way of cars, not to keep them safe. They force people to walk long distances to cross streets legally. They reinforce an inequitable and unsafe hierarchy of street users which puts the most vulnerable users at the bottom and keeps them “safe” by erasing them. They encourage enforcement practices that put a heavy and unfair burden on low-income residents. They are disproportionately applied to Black people.
15 Comments on Jaywalking Laws Are… You Guessed It- RACIST!
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Translation: Blacks can’t be depended upon to obey even the simplest laws.
You want to protect yourself? Self segregate.
When I drove a bus in Seattle, I had one regular rider who was a street person. Normally he just rode around Ballard, but sometimes he would ride with me downtown. He was not really going anywhere, he was just riding for something to do and to get out of the weather.
One night he road with me to downtown. As we sat at the layover, I saw someone — whom I would not normally expect to obey jaywalking laws — obeying the jaywalking laws. I made a comment.
My rider said, \”That\’s because he\’s carrying (drugs) and does not want to draw attention to himself.\”
Yeah, local men’s and women’s shelter gives a steady example of correlation between race and lawfulness.
Don’t want crosswalks? Okay, take your chances, but seem too many “accidents” from drivers trying to avoid bad pedestrian/bicyclist behaviour. Perhaps we should adopt SE Asian rules: right of way goes to higher gross weight.
Speaking of downtown Seattle, in the late 70’s, during the Christmas season, my mother got a ticket for jaywalking. Right in front of “Frederick & Nelson.” The first and only citation that she has ever received. She’s very goody-2-shoes. She has never done it since. We still laugh about it.
Install Vines and Ropes so they can Swing like Tarzan Mutha Fucka.
They’d have a point if they called it “N-walking”…
Civilation is racist
Do they bust more whiteass crackers for jay walking than they do blacks?
Animals in a zoo.
Hallucinating racism everywhere is racist.
And don’t get me started on the blacks who totally ignore yellow no parking zones and pull up to a retail establishment. It’s not an isolated incident. I see it all the time. They’re dying for the cops to enforce it.
They won’t.
Next on the docket…
“Littering laws are ‘racist’ because black people litter more.”
Well they can’t cross at the signal, because the little white guy on the “walk” sign is a racist symbol of white oppression.
When you busy a cap on someone or rob a liquor store you can’t make a clean getaway if you can’t just run through the streets.