Shocking as it is, only one state—Oregon—has a law that makes it a crime punishable by jail to hit and kill or injure a pedestrian, cyclist, or any other “vulnerable user” in a crosswalk. In San Francisco, reports StreetsBlog, two pedestrians have been killed by drivers in the last two months; one, an 81-year-old woman, was struck and killed in a unsignalized crosswalk last night. Oregon’s law creates an enhanced penalty for drivers who kill or seriously injure another person who isn’t in an “enclosed vehicle” and who are convicted of careless driving. (Vehicular assault is a different category of crime that is much harder to prove). A similar proposal in the Washington State legislature, which would make it a crime to kill or seriously injure someone while violating a traffic law, has not yet been introduced, although state Sen. Joe McDermott’s office says he is taking it under consideration. Proposals to criminalize assault by vehicle gained momentum with the death of city council aide Tatsuo Nakata, who was struck and killed at the crosswalk 47th and Admiral Way by a driver who was talking on his cell phone.
#50 – proof of Seattle people’s congenital retardedness
If drumming up the most dizzying array of comments ranging from thoughtful to utterly vacant and ad hominem is any measure, ECB is the best contributor to SLOG by a long margin. Keep up the good work, kid.
Ever notice how many people yakking on their cellphone don’t even notice what’s happening around them. I’ve almost run over several who are so wrapped up in their conversations that they don’t even notice when someone is passing them.
@49 – If it’s an uncontrolled intersection, then you must yield to the driver coming from the right. If nobody is coming from the right, then you don’t need to stop.
This yield to the right rule is fairly standard in most states. Some states (such as California) also have a 15 mph speed limit when going through such intersections, but I haven’t been able to find a similar law in Washington.
I’ve never had a problem, as I look both ways, and wait for traffic to clear. I can’t say the general population follows the same pattern.
It does me no good to have the driver prosecuted after I’m dead. You could impose the death penalty and people would still get hit in crosswalks.
Mahtli69 & Lloyd Clydesdale — you are completely wrong. Unsigned intersections are implied 4-way stops. Unfortunately you have plenty of fellow believers in this city.
My immediate neighborhood has two problem intersections. The city has told me stop signs are only considered for intersections that have a record of collisions. The key word is record — if there’s a fender-bender that’s not reported, the city has no record. My neighbors who live near these intersections know of plenty of collisions, but there are no police reports so no action by the city.
As for speed bumps, the fire department hates them worse than traffic circles.
I took a stab at getting circles installed. Went door to door with a petition, got lots of sympathy for circles, which evaporated when I inquired whether the household would be willing to help pay for the circles. A decade ago the city was funding circles, but these days it’s very hard to qualify for a grant to install circles. So they have to be funded by the immediate neighborhood. Cost is $6000 to $10,000 per circle, which works out to a couple hundred dollars per household, depending on how many houses there are to spread the cost over. So we ain’t got circles and crossing these intersections at rush hour amounts to playing chicken.
@56 – “Unsigned intersections are implied 4-way stops. “
Link?
All I’ve been able to find is this:
Yield does not mean stop. Furthermore, the reason that many residential streets have the concrete traffic circle at intersections is to SLOW cars down. Slowing them down wouldn’t be necessary if they had to stop at every street.
I agree that pedestrians should be cautious–safety is in great part our own responsibility. However, all you drivers out there need to realize that you are in an extremely large, hard, fast-moving vehicle which can cause serious injury to us walkers if you are not paying attention. I have been hit and knocked onto a hood once, and come within two or three inches of being hit on two other occasions (every time in controlled crosswalks in broad daylight in Seattle). On two of these occasions I had made eye contact with the drivers of said vehicles. So, please, exercise a little extra caution, drivers, because you are not the vulnerable ones here.
The Seattle vehicular assault ordinance was overruled by some judges as violating a state statute, requiring uniform traffc laws. Apparently this means the city attorney isn’t charging people under that ordinance at this time.
This ordinance, like the state law quoted above, and like any criminal approach, cannot be an effective deterrent, ultimately, because in too many cases there would be no witnsseses to the driver’s recklessness. The victim can be dead. A passenger likely would not volunteer that the driver was being reckless. Too many cases would be unprosecutable with the result that the law itself has no deterrent force. For example, in the case of the driver who hit the city council aide it was only because he was on a cell phone and his very young daughter said so, that the city attorney could get a conviction. In other words you can’t infer the recklessness from the collision itself so too often that kind of criminal law just doesn’t work.
The solution may be to focus on suspension or removal of the driver’s license following a driver-pedestrian collision, or following a moving violation(s) + a collision, with the presumption being rebuttable but the driver being the one who has to prove he/she wasn’t at fault. The presumption makes sense as a factual matter because really, few pedestrians hurl themselves in front of a few tons of moving metal.
One could even devise a graduated system where at some point (X moving violations plus the 2d time striking a pedestrian or a cyclist) you just aren’t allowed to drive anymore — period. That in fact was the case of the driver who hit and killed the city council aide.
If you rely on the criminal law system, then too often there’s no proof or it does not meet the high standard of a criminal case; and you can’t introduce the prior bad record into evidence; all with the result that pedestrians are not well protected.
your more likely to get struck by lightning than killed by an evil driver. Ive never crossed a street w/out planning my escape. I hate the aholes who walk out slow and glare at drivers. get a life; were late on our way to make the world turn you poser leech! Im all for a carless downtown; but man I hate self rightous pedestrains.
your more likely to get struck by lightning than killed by an evil driver. —#60
Average number of lightning-caused deaths in Washington per year: 0.5 —NOAA
Average number of Washington pedestrian deaths per year from motor vehicle collisions: 65 —Washington Traffic Safety Commission
So you’re about 130 times more likely to die by being hit by a driver than by lightning in Washington. (And that’s only counting pedestrians.) How many of those drivers are evil? Well, how many of them are drunk? More than 1 every two years, I’m betting.
entertaining fundamentalist liberal fantasies about dark forces at work on the roads. lets burn the evil drivers!
Ah, ECB, the Stranger’s answer to Limbaugh. Nothing is too straightforward to benefit from dishonest presentation, a little distortion, some emotional hand-wringing, and a dash of moral superiority.
Assault is, by definition, intentional. If we want to expand the class of crimes covered by assault to include carelessness, and to create a new “negligent assault” crime, all sorts of new crimes can be created.
However, people do get charged with negligent homicide or reckless driving all the time. It’s an utter falsehood that you can just run pedestrians down and escape with no penalty unless intent can be shown.
Really, isn’t there something better to lie about today?
This law is a poorly conceived knee-jerk reaction.
Any law which promotes the illusion (because, that’s all it is) that a crosswalk is a safe place will have the opposite of its intended effect. If this law is passed, I predict there are more pedestrian fatalities, not less.
Good it should be a law that if any one will make any damages to other during driving he/she should be punished for it.
“The views of the major sociological perspectives would all share the similar view that impaired driving is wrong but all three would have great differences from one another as well. The structural functionalist may argue that drinking and driving is one of the dysfunctions of a functional society. All societies need dysfunctions to operate correctly. Drunk driving as a dysfunction is creating jobs within the society such as auto maintenance and manufacturing. A functionalist may also say that impaired driving is inevitable, a part of society that people must learn to live with and do its best to prevent.
major accidents these days goes to car accidents. and law should act fast on this case.
some accidents are due to malfunctioning of cars so it’s also important to have mechanical checking on car parts (ex: chevy parts).