Readers may have noticed a small story in a recent Burnaby NOW edition. The headline read: Injured jaywalker gets fine. The 51-year-old pedestrian was crossing Kingsway and Boundary Road in the evening when he was hit by a car. He was not in a crosswalk. The collision came only days after a 78-year-old man was killed while jaywalking across Willingdon Avenue.
A police spokesperson said the message was clear: “I think the message is to use crosswalks.”
Pedestrians complain about drivers trying to swerve around them. Drivers complain about pedestrians leaping off of curbs. (As an aside: More than 40 per cent of pedestrians hit by cars were actually in crosswalks.)
Many pedestrians ignore all the basic safety rules and so do many drivers. It’s a wonder that there aren’t more deaths on our streets. So, we were interested to see that Nova Scotia’s legislature boosted that province’s jaywalking fine from $410 to $697.50 this week. Compare that to B.C.’s $109 potential fine, or Ontario’s $50 and you can see that Nova Scotia has set some serious penalties.
The hike was not without its critics. Some said streets needed to be designed to be safer. Others said the fine was disproportionate to the action. Others said the fine was hard on poor people – many of whom spend more time as pedestrians than as drivers. Still others said that given the amount of the fine, police tended not to use it because it creates such a hardship. And that meant folks didn’t take the threat seriously.
Proponents said the mere thought of a potential $700 fine makes one stop and think twice before jaywalking. Some said it was a small price to pay if it saves one life.
That’s hard to argue with. Not only is the life of a pedestrian precious, but think of the trauma that an innocent driver carries with him or her when they have struck a jaywalker through no fault of their own. If a hefty fine cuts down on jaywalkers, we’re for it.
Now, $700 does sound a bit steep. We’re not sure if that makes sense. And if it does, we’d rather see a sliding scale of some sort, say $300 to a maximum of $700 for a jaywalker who triggers an accident.
But what we do know for sure is that pedestrians need to realize that it never makes sense to jaywalk. Walking an extra block to a safer (legal) crossing point may save your life and save some driver a world of hurt.
