Green Jersey

Crosswalks: More than just lines

Image via millermicro.com.

A summer pilot program has confirmed that to many New Jersey drivers, crosswalks are street decor only.

Normally, not yielding to a pedestrian in a crosswalk is like a white lie among traffic offenses. Police don’t seem to do much. This summer, that changed in South Orange and Montclair, where Montclair police issued more than 800 summonses over the course of the program to drivers who motored on through a crosswalk, ignoring a decoy.

The charge typically carries a $100 fine (plus $30 in court costs) and two driver’s license points, according to the Star-Ledger.

Yesterday, Detective Vincent Nardone of the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office vehicular homicide unit told the paper officers averaged 70 tickets in a 4-hour period.

The pilot program, funded by a $40,000 federal grant, aimed to increase pedestrian safety in a state where about 5,500 pedestrians are hurt annually and 150 are killed. In Essex County alone last year, 18 were killed, according to the Ledger.

Enforcement seems to work — Rutgers University graduate students sent out to collect data determined that 11 percent of drivers in Montclair and South Orange yielded to pedestrians before the program began. After, that number rose to 26 percent in Montclair, 32 percent in South Orange.

Having been ignored to intimidated several times in the past two and a half weeks during my own summer pilot program — getting around entirely without my car — I hope there are plans to do this in other parts of the state.