Jaywalkers and other hardened criminals

The other day, the jungle drums in our office building were working overtime with the news that the local gendarmes were assiduously enforcing the city ordnance against jaywalking. Several of the people who work in our building, including one of my office mates, got dinged with $54.00 tickets.

You would have thought someone had mooned the queen!

That whole day, messages and water cooler chat were all about the unreasonable attitude of the cops. You can probably imagine how it went but just in case, here’s the nutshell version:

                “Why are the cops hassling people trying to get to work when there are drug deals going on within view of the same officers? Don’t they have better things to do than bother hard-working, law-abiding citizens? And besides, it was still blinking when I started across.”

You want the short answer? Just wait for the light! How hard is that?

Look, I understand there are priorities in the enforcement of laws. This is most likely the reason why jaywalking crackdowns are so infrequent. But does the relative severity of narcotics and prostitution violations mean that we never enforce ‘lesser’ regulations?

The fact is, jaywalking in downtown Seattle is totally out of hand. I don’t drive there very often but when I do, most of the problems I have is with the jerks on foot who walk wherever and whenever they want, secure in the assumption that no driver in his right mind will dare run them over. Which in my case, is a valid if annoying assumption.

I guess I could go on for pages about this particular issue but the truth is, I ride the bus and it doesn’t affect me all that much.

What does seem worth the space is a brief discussion about civil behavior.

Our laws are never going to be sufficient to ensure civility or even safety in our society. We can’t account for every possible eventuality and if we tried (some societies have), we’d end up with an opaque welter of rules that the best of us would find burdensome and the worst of us would use as weapons in petty squabbles.

But we do need some rules to help us all understand and abide by the common expectations that – if abided by – allow us to live and work together in peace. Traffic behaviors are one area in which, left to our own devices, bedlam would ensue. Don’t believe me? Think about how many yahoos do dangerous things every day even with the laws we currently enforce.

The truth is that traffic flow in an urban setting needs to be regulated in order to allow ease of flow and provide some modicum of safety. In fact, it’s a serious chore to figure out how to take all these inputs – walkers, riders, drivers, messengers, deliveries, road work, freeway ramps, flow to suburbs, commercial vs. retail vs. residential vs. mixed use, etc. – and produce a plan that works. So, traffic engineering has become a discipline of its own. These folks take into account all those factors with which I personally don’t want to be bothered and they come up with a plan. All I have to do is follow the plan.

It isn't because we have enough police to follow us all around 24/7 that we're relatively safe from robbery and assault. We’ll never have and shouldn’t want that many cops. Most of us are relatively safe most of the time because most of us follow rules we’ve agreed upon.

Some people just don’t want to follow the rules. They think the rules are too petty for them to bother with. But if we’re making petty rules, change the rules.

I know some of you will think me a crank for this one and I don’t really care. If you park in a disabled space without a placard, chances are I’m going to send your photo to the traffic department.

If you’re in Seattle and you walk against the light (and by the way, when it starts blinking, it’s too late to start across), chances are you’ll get a $54.00 dollar ticket. Just pay up and be glad you didn’t get run over.