Comment 61980

By seancb (registered) - website | Posted April 08, 2011 at 08:50:52

Zero tolerance? Nobody is talking zero tolerance.

Actually, the police are talking zero tolerance. Did you read the article?

"The purpose of the Strategy," reads the announcement, "is to manage and minimize problems associated with pedestrian non-compliance." The enforcement strategy started on April 1 and will continue to December 1 with a "zero tolerance policy" for pedestrian disobedience.

Here's the problem with this: If a pedestrian makes a mistake - or does something stupid - they are putting themselves at risk. If a driver does, they are putting everyone around them at risk. This means that the responsibility of a driver to obey the law is much more important to society than the responsibility weighing on pedestrians' shoulders.

All of the anecdotal evidence is nice to talk about, but we all have similar conflicting anecdotes. For every motorist bust that you witness, how many un-busted rolling stops have you witnessed? Thousands? How about drivers not coming to a complete stop when turning right on a red? The number of times that happens to me when I am approaching an intersection as a pedestrian is virtually un-countable. It happens to me multiple times every single day. And since the majority of pedestrian accidents happen at intersections, these are the types of behaviours that need to be enforced.

Enforcing jaywalking laws is an absolute waste of police time and taxpayer dollars and will do virtually nothing to improve pedestrian safety.

If it was actually about safety, we'd be talking about real change, such as eliminating right-on-red, de-timing the traffic lights, slowing traffic within our neighbourhoods using physical measures such as bump-outs, dead ends and speed humps (as in most downtown toronto neighbourhoods), etc. But these true safety measures will never happen because it would be too inconvenient for drivers.

So spare us all the lip service and concern trolling about pedestrian safety. It's not about safety and it never is in this town. It's about maintaining the through-traffic mentality.

Hamilton: North America's premier drive-thru city.

Comment edited by seancb on 2011-04-08 08:52:32

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