Jeff Ward: Our New Pedestrian Crosswalk Law Ain't Working!

It ain’t working! All you have to do is drive down Third Street on any sunny afternoon, and you can see it for yourself. Oblivious to anything but their incessant and inane cell-phone conversations, the vast majority of motorists fail to notice even the sweetest of little old ladies trying in vain to cross the street.

And it ain’t working despite Geneva’s best efforts to get the word out.

What’s even worse is, those attempts to enlighten the motoring public may inadvertently be causing more problems than they solve. Some drivers inexplicably take those Third Street signs alerting them to “stop for pedestrians in crosswalks” as the equivalent of four-way stop signs.

In fact, in the last two months, I’ve been twice forced to come to a screeching Third Street halt when a crossing motorist incorrectly assumed I also had a stop sign.

You may recall, in an all-too-brief bout of sanity and foresight, our state decided, if a pedestrian steps into a marked crosswalk with no overriding traffic signal, then approaching vehicles must stop and give that pedestrian the right of way. The motorist may then proceed when it's safe to do so.

Does this July 2010 statute absolve anyone from using their God-given common sense when stepping off the curb? No! As St. Charles Police Chief Jim Lamkin told me, this new law doesn't mean pedestrians should start running out into the street and hope for the best.

What the law does mean is, should our little old lady step of the Fourth Street curb onto that State Street asphalt, traffic on Geneva's main thoroughfare must come to a complete stop and remain immobile until she makes her way across those four lanes—no questions asked!

But even the GPD folks have given up on this statutory notion. They posted a police officer crossing guard at that intersection during the Festival of the Vine. They knew darn well that, despite the law and without their presence, our intrepid little old lady wouldn’t have made three feet without getting picked off by an impatient motorist.

Of course, this begs the question, “What the heck happens to us when we get behind the wheel?” People who wouldn’t be caught dead uttering an unkind word to someone’s face suddenly turn into the moral equivalent of a Hells Angel. I can only surmise that climbing into that steel contraption instils a form of anonymity not unlike what propels some Patch posters into saying the silliest things.

What does this phenomenon say about us as a culture? C'mon! Traffic out here isn’t nearly as bad as it is in the big city.

Every civilized First World country on the face of the planet already has these kind of reasonable pedestrian crosswalk laws. It's only in this country, where chronically late and irrational drivers can’t wait 10 seconds for a senior citizen to shuffle across the street, do generally reasonable people get rebel against them.

No wonder they call it the “home of the brave.” It takes that much courage just to make it across the street.

As I recently made my way across a secondary street in my own neighborhood, an SUV coming up a hill and around a bend actually accelerated when the driver saw me in the crosswalk. Only when he/she realized I wouldn’t be intimidated, did he/she slow down.

Generally, I’m not one to encourage any police department to resort to its ticket books, and I've consistently complimented the GPD brass on their reluctance to do so. But not only is it time to start writing citations, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to stage the kind of stings the city of Chicago has often implemented.

You’ve heard about ‘em! The CPD sends an undercover officer into the crosswalk on a busy street in full view of nearby patrol cars that proceed to stop any motorist who doesn’t stop for the “pedestrian.”

Of course, I’d continue that fine GPD tradition of educating the public by issuing warnings first, but the second time? Lower the boom!

C’mon Genevans! What’s so hard about this? If a pedestrian steps into a crosswalk, you stop!

That’s all there is to it!