[Image-1]
When he remembers being hit by a car last year, Joe Pepper just feels ashamed.
The University of King’s College student admits he had been drinking that night. He jogged across the dimly lit Coburg Road, just miscalculating how much time he had to miss an oncoming car.
“I guess I was feeling gutsy,” Pepper says. Before he knew it, the car hit his leg, making his head smash against its hood.
But it’s not just embarrassment and a serious concussion that Pepper remembers.
“While I was on the stretcher waiting to go to the emergency room, the police came and gave me a ticket for jaywalking,” he says. “At that point, it was just insult to injury.”
Pepper’s car accident was a year ago, before the implementation of Bill 133, which amended Nova Scotia’s Motor Vehicle Act and introduced a $697 jaywalking fine to the province.
“I just couldn’t have handled that,” Pepper says.
Over the past several weeks, Nova Scotia’s active-transportation experts and citizens have corralled their outrage about the $287 fine increase, arguing Bill 133 misses the mark.
Bill Campbell, director of Walk ’n’ Roll Halifax, wrote a letter to Halifax regional council and the province expressing serious concern over the size of the fine.
“There’s certainly good intent and good direction in the bill,” Campbell says. “Still, the delivery or the evidence-based background is weak.”
But Nova Scotia’s transportation minister, Geoff MacLellan, doesn’t care if the fine is palatable. He agrees it’s a steep charge, and has heard the angry voices critical of Bill 133, but still backs the new legislation.
“We’re not in the game of making it more palatable to ignore road safety rules,” he says. “The main goal…was to level the playing field between drivers and pedestrians, and send a message that we all have a role to play to keep ourselves and other road users safe.”
Dylan Reid, spokesperson for Walk Toronto, says a $697 jaywalking fee is “just way out of line.”
Jaywalking fines in Toronto can be anywhere between $35 and $90, while elsewhere in the country penalties range from $25 in Calgary to $250 in Edmonton. Nova Scotia’s nearly $700 fine is a red flag, says Reid, exposing that minister MacLellan “just doesn’t get it.”
“Don’t come down and say, ‘You can only cross at the corner, where there’s a light,’ and all that stuff,” Reid says. “Because that’s just not how humans behave.”
He believes that fines like this make police stop ticketing entirely “because it’s such a burden on people.” The increased penalty has also been criticized for deterring walking, and unduly affecting low-income Nova Scotians who can’t afford a car.
The issue isn’t as clear as a red or green light. Though everybody wants a safer Halifax, it’s evident government and citizens don’t agree on what “safer” looks like.
In the short term, Bill Campbell encourages frustrated citizens to call MacLellan directly and express their concerns.
Reid, meanwhile, believes creating safe streets has almost nothing to do with the penal system but requires a more holistic, long-term view.
“The best thing to do is education,” says Reid. “Start that with kids. Show children how to walk safely starting in elementary school and enforce that message. Then more people will do it.”
Related Stories
Ambulance fees cause heavy damage to the sick and injured
Low-income bus passes long overdue
Righting a wrong with the Cogswell Interchange
Why can’t Halifax Transit build more bus shelters?
This article appears in Jan 7-13, 2016.
There are a few misrepresentations in this article I believe. Disclaimer, I got this information from a conversation on CBC’s mainstreet.
1. The fine isn’t for “Jaywalking”. In my mind, Jaywalking is crossing a street while not in a crosswalk. In this sense, Jaywalking is actually legal, provided a vehicle doesn’t have to yield to the jaywalker.
2. The fine is actually for not yielding to a vehicle when the vehicle has the Right of Way. So cross the street wherever you want, it’s only illegal when a car has to actively avoid hitting you.
3. Our choices have consequences. Choosing to cross the street in such ways that would result in this fine endanger your own life and those of the drivers. Sure it’s unlikely someone in a car would die from hitting a pedestrian, but it could happen, perhaps the pedestrian will cause a major accident/pile up after a car stops quickly to avoid hitting the ped, or has to swerve.
Will this fine be a bigger deterrent for “jaywalkers”? Probably not, I know I wouldn’t be thinking of it if I was drunk and walking home from a bar. And perhaps a hike on fines to motorists who hit peds in a crosswalk is warranted. Major injuries are much more likely in that scenario so the drivers should have significant deterrents as well.
^THIS! TaSP just summed it all up in facts!
Avoid crosswalks, avoid pedestrian signals, and return to the universally applicable method of crossing the street.
It guarantees everyone’s safety, it goes like this:
Look both ways before crossing the street, and cross when no one is coming.
The article really should have cleared up the idea that jaywalking means crossing a street outside of a crosswalk. It means doing this AND interfering with traffic. If no one has to brake or swerve for you, you’re good.
If the city and police are going to support and enforce this hijacking of your wallet fine in one of North Americas busiest per capita walking cities then they have to evaluate the lack of crosswalks in busy pedestrian zones and implement placing more “natural” crossing zones such as Granville street to Granville mall across duke street. I am in agreement with the fine if a blatant and dangerous (or potentially dangerous and avoided) event transpires from reckless pedestrian jaywalking, the rare exception. Just yesterday while in acceleration mode to speed I had to avoid a cyclist jaywalking/cycling in the middle of Sackville drive during rush hour as they hopped from the sidewalk with no warning and sped perpendicular across the street after just passing a safe spotlighted crosswalk 30 metres back, a good example of where a fine could have been rightly applicable.
Drivers are laughing at yhe pedestrians outraged at this fine. Because we are at the mercy of head-to-toe black wearing pedestrians aka moving shadows, as I call them, wandering willy-nilly allover the HRM. Its about time the council shake up the status quo. What we really need, though, is a mandatory light on pedestrians. Everything else is lit, its impossible to see pedestrians (that love their dark colors) in a city like HRM.
this one needs a re-think, not certain on how this got to that dollar figure. I little common sense is needed. Easy answer, look at a similar size city, find out what they do, duplicate it. No more discussion. If the city hires an official Side Walk Pedestrian official spokesperson I give up. How did society get by 60 years ago when cars became more abundant. I guess people were smarter back then.
Also worth knowing: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26073797 Jaywalking: How the car industry outlawed crossing the road says:
A key moment, says Norton, was a petition signed by 42,000 people in Cincinnati in 1923 to limit the speed of cars mechanically to 25mph (40kph). Though the petition failed, an alarmed auto industry scrambled to shift the blame for pedestrian casualties from drivers to walkers.