Chicago Tuesdays: Hey, Do You KNOW That I'm Walking Here?

Though the new pedestrian crossing law passed during the Summer here in Illinois, you wouldn't know it if you walked out in traffic. Or watched tv. Or were a driver...

The old law:
When traffic control signals are not in place or not in operation the driver of a vehicle shall stop and yield the right-of-way to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within a crosswalk when the pedestrian is upon the half of the roadway upon which the vehicle is traveling, or when the pedestrian is approaching so closely from the opposite half of the roadway as to be in danger.

The new law (as the Chicago Tribune describes it):
Drivers must stop for pedestrians in all crosswalks — even those that are unmarked or don't have a stop sign or a traffic signal. The penalty for failing to stop is a traffic citation of $50 to $500. Fines vary by county.

If the old law led to confusion among drivers about when to stop (and few had been obeying even that law), the new law merely exponentially compounds that confusion because of a fundamental lack of communication about the existence of this new law and the non-existence of its enforcement. There are no road signs. There are no cops on stake out. There are no print, radio, tv, internet ads warning about this change. And the fines are - although a pretty sum to pay if not expecting it - not the most prohibitive. There is no dialog on this because so few people know about it, so I'd be foolish to expect a culture change anytime soon or even within the distant future.

About the only place where one can find mention of the new pedestrian laws are just a few newspaper articles. That's all the news I could find on this subject. But those few mentions have emboldened fellow walkers like myself. And, of course, almost get us run over in the process. Certainly cussed at. But definitely less safe.

A few questions:

• Seeing how this law is very lax in enforcement, doesn't this give police more power to justify random stops, further complicating their relationships with the communities they're charged to serve?
• Seeing as how Illinois is not the only state to have this new supposedly walker-friendly law in place (if not effect), how have other states educated and enforced this?
• More to the point, how do budget-crisis states deal with the need to clarify and enforce this law?

News of the Weird - Returns

File this under the category, "These One's Are for You, Mr. American President"

1)

Chad Hudgens filed a lawsuit in January against his former employer, a sales firm in Provo, Utah, charging that as part of a motivational "team-building exercise" his coworkers waterboarded him. According to a Washington Post article, Hudgen's supervisor told sales staff, "You saw how hard Chad fought for air right there. I want you to go back inside and fight that hard to make sales."

From the Post:

Hudgens's lawsuit... suggests the testosterone-poisoned setting of the David Mamet play "Glengarry Glen Ross." Hudgens alleged that if the 10-person sales team went a day without a sale, members had to work the next day standing up; [the supervisor] took away their chairs. The team leader also threatened to draw a mustache in permanent marker on the face of sales people for "negativity," Hudgens said. [Their boss] kept on his desk a piece of wood, "the 2-by-4 of motivation," he said.

Who was his boss? This guy?


2)

Brigadier General Zuhair Abada Mraweh, traffic commander for Baghdad's Rusafah district - where car bombs and kidnappings remain pressing concerns, according to the New York Times - announced in April that his officers would soon begin issuing tickets to drivers who failed to use their seat belts. The fine for noncompliance is 15,000 dinars, or roughly $12.50.

From the International Herald Tribune:

"It is part of the healing process of this country and of Baghdad to enforce the law, law by law," said [B.G. Mraweh].

"The citizens are learning the laws step by step," said Mraweh, sitting in his office in the Karada neighborhood. "We have applied all the laws concerning traffic, so it's time for the seat belt law to be practiced."...

Mraweh said that the seat belt legislation — which applies only to drivers, not passengers — was in effect during the government of Saddam Hussein. After the Americans invaded in 2003, a high import tax on automobiles was lifted, flooding Iraq with enthusiastic new drivers. He said that there were no dependable statistics on traffic accidents, but that enforcing the law would reduce them by 70 percent. [My guess is that the key phrase here is traffic accidents.]

Mraweh is passionate about traffic control. He is particularly irked by the driving behavior by the employees of security companies like Blackwater, who sometimes throw water bottles at people walking down the street or shoot their guns in the air to clear the road, he said.

But primarily, Mraweh sees his job as a way to piece together his shattered country.

"If everyone says there are killings, there are massacres, then I will stay powerless at home and this will disable the country," he said. "But if the grocer goes to work, the merchant goes to work, I go to work, even you go to work, there will be no more killing, and the criminal will be afraid and he will go back to his den like a mouse"

Original stories cribbed and wrote verbatim from News of the Weird, posted in the Chicago Reader in the June 5th, 2008 edition, p. 109 (I believe. It's late. It's hot. It's bedtime.)