What you should know about jaywalking
 

Funny, I've never seen anyone stopped, let alone arrested, for jaywalking in my life (I'm in my 50's), even though I see jaywalkers almost every day.

Here in Wisconsin there is no law for jay walking, if you are not in a cross walk then vehicles on the road have the right away, if you imped traffic then it's up to a $20 fine (about the same as walking on the wrong side of the street), it's to your advantage to go to a cross walk here because if there is no traffic light then you can cross as long as oncoming traffic has time to stop and they are required to stop as long as you have a foot in the cross walk, I think it's a $180 or so fine for not stopping and over $200 for going around someone who is in the cross walk.

I'm not sure about other states, but i know California law used to state(not sure if it still does) that if the pedestrian crosses at an intersection that there is an "implied" crosswalk as long as he crosses from one corner to an adjacent corner(not through the middle of the intersection) and that traffic was required to yield to him if they have time to stop, but IIRC this only applied to 2 lane streets(1 in each direction)

I find the best way to be a pedestrian anywhere is to look what the locals do and copy them. After all if they have reached a certain age then they must know how to do it. Behaviour of walkers ranges from the rigid 'crocodiles' of crossing people in places like Tokyo or even New York to the live game of 'frogger' in Spain.

A Junior was especially impressed by the crossing man walking animation in Spain last time we were there. It sort of looked like a moving Andy Capp.

http://www.voyager2.com.au/ccsvi/AndyCappAnimated.gif

"Jaywalking" laws crack me up!

I've seen it extensively in Eastern European countries. Personally I dont see the point in such laws- It removes the "Darwinian" element from the sport of crossing the road.

:D

gotta love natural selection dished out by a truck :D

IMO jaywalking laws aren't as much to protect the lives of peds, but to protect innocent drivers from hitting morons. I mean sure, it would be nice to have certain DNA sequences eliminated from the gene pool, but I'd prefer that my car is not the means by which this is done. Even if I was obeying every single law, and the pedestrian jumped out from behind a bush right into my headlights, then I still get punished for unintentionally causing someone's death, if not by the court, then by my conscience. I killed a moron, but still a human being.

Yes, the police sometimes get anal about catching jaywalkers, like arresting someone for crossing an empty road. But the line has to be drawn somewhere: If they were to allow people to cross when the nearest car is 500m away, then way shouldn't they when the car is 300m away? 100m? 10m?