"Did you know?" Experiences with the ACPD and a run in with an aggressive motorist…

[mstone]

@baiskeli 52366 wrote:

Whether its the law or not, or enforcable or not, when a pedestrian is already crossing and headed across a car’s path, the car should slow or stop, even if the pedestrian hesitates. I think that’s how it should be.

Yup, that’s the desired societal norm. It’s also the rational action for the motorist, if he understands that if the pedestrian decides to assert his right of way and the motorist, because he was hoping to intimidate the pedestrian and waited too long to react, hits the pedestrian, the motorist may be liable for civil & criminal penalties.

[baiskeli]

@mstone 52369 wrote:

Yup, that’s the desired societal norm. It’s also the rational action for the motorist, if he understands that if the pedestrian decides to assert his right of way and the motorist, because he was hoping to intimidate the pedestrian and waited too long to react, hits the pedestrian, the motorist may be liable for civil & criminal penalties.

Well, I can see a more innocent reason – a motorist seeing that a pedestrian is yielding (out of abundant caution, and not knowing the law) and deciding that means he can take the ROW and cross the ped’s path, treating it like he’s a pedestrian too – but he shouldn’t do that either.

[dasgeh]

@mstone 52367 wrote:

They can issue the ticket, the question is whether it will stand up in court. (And like anything else in the law, ‘it might”.) But I don’t think you can point to anything in the code of virginia that equates yield and stop; there are, however, provisions which add a requirement to stop to a requirement to yield. Note that in some jurisdictions, a stop actually is specifically required. (E.g., DC: but note that the phrasing in DC is “stop AND yield the right of way”, not “stop TO yield the right of way”.)

I agree that you can yield without stopping, but I also agree that you can clearly not yield ROW — e.g. ped steps into crosswalk when a car going 25 mph (or about 1.5 feet / second) is 40 feet away. The car will have to slow to avoid a collision. If the car doesn’t slow, and the ped stays in the crosswalk without stepping into the path of the car, the car still hasn’t yielded the ROW to a ped in a crosswalk.

I would be interested to hear if these tickets haven’t held up in court. But that’s not what ACPD is saying. They’re just not giving out the tickets.

[DismalScientist]

@dasgeh 52373 wrote:

I agree that you can yield without stopping, but I also agree that you can clearly not yield ROW — e.g. ped steps into crosswalk when a car going 25 mph (or about 1.5 feet / second) is 40 feet away. The car will have to slow to avoid a collision. If the car doesn’t slow, and the ped stays in the crosswalk without stepping into the path of the car, the car still hasn’t yielded the ROW to a ped in a crosswalk.

Don’t try this at home. A car traveling 25 mph (actually 36 ft/sec) require 30 ft to stop without any reaction delay. The standard reaction delay at 25 mph is 55 feet. I wouldn’t expect a car traveling 25 mph that is 40 ft away to even slow before reaching the sidewalk.

See: http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?000+cod+46.2-880

[dasgeh]

@DismalScientist 52384 wrote:

Don’t try this at home. A car traveling 25 mph (actually 36 ft/sec) require 30 ft to stop without any reaction delay. The standard reaction delay at 25 mph is 55 feet. I wouldn’t expect a car traveling 25 mph that is 40 ft away to even slow before reaching the sidewalk.

See: http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?000+cod+46.2-880

Fair enough. I just did the back of the envelope calculation. Ha – and I meant yards (a very poor quick calc where I mixed yards and feet. Stupid imperical measurements). So change the example to 40 yards. Car has time to slow and if it just slowed, the ped would have time to cross.

[baiskeli]

Physics always wins!

[dasgeh]

@baiskeli 52371 wrote:

Well, I can see a more innocent reason – a motorist seeing that a pedestrian is yielding (out of abundant caution, and not knowing the law) and deciding that means he can take the ROW and cross the ped’s path, treating it like he’s a pedestrian too – but he shouldn’t do that either.

That’s not innocent. That’s not yielding the ROW to a ped in the crosswalk (no requirement the ped be taking the ROW). That is exactly breaking the law (or violating the code, to be more precise). So he should get a ticket. If that isn’t breaking the law, then the law has no meaning.

[baiskeli]

@dasgeh 52427 wrote:

That’s not innocent. That’s not yielding the ROW to a ped in the crosswalk (no requirement the ped be taking the ROW). That is exactly breaking the law (or violating the code, to be more precise). So he should get a ticket. If that isn’t breaking the law, then the law has no meaning.

I said “more innocent” – I was responding to the “hoping to intimidate the pedestrian” idea. You’re right, it’s not innocent, just less evil-intentioned.

[mstone]

@dasgeh 52373 wrote:

I agree that you can yield without stopping, but I also agree that you can clearly not yield ROW — e.g. ped steps into crosswalk when a car going 25 mph (or about 1.5 feet / second) is 40 feet away. The car will have to slow to avoid a collision. If the car doesn’t slow, and the ped stays in the crosswalk without stepping into the path of the car, the car still hasn’t yielded the ROW to a ped in a crosswalk.

I would be interested to hear if these tickets haven’t held up in court. But that’s not what ACPD is saying. They’re just not giving out the tickets.

Without the right of way, the car has the responsibility to avoid a collision. Acceptable alternatives are stopping, changing speed, or altering course. If the car does none of those things and either hits the pedestrian or causes the pedestrian to jump out of the way, they have violated the right of way. Arguably (and you can bet the motorist will argue this) the pedestrian chooses to yield the right of way by holding back and allowing the car to pass, the motorist can be grateful and continue. I don’t see anything in the statute about “scaring the pedestrian into not moving” (though I think there should be). If the pedestrian isn’t in a position that the car needs to take some action, the motorist doesn’t need to. They should, and if the pedestrian does what they’re legally allowed to, the motorist might be in a world of hurt, but that doesn’t mean that they legally have to. Note that bills have been brought up before the assembly to specifically require a stop, but I don’t think any have made it out of committee. (And not for the reason that the code already requires a stop.)

[baiskeli]

@mstone 52440 wrote:

either hits the pedestrian or causes the pedestrian to jump out of the way, they have violated the right of way.

Or even requires the pedestrian to stop.

[dasgeh]

@mstone 52440 wrote:

Without the right of way, the car has the responsibility to avoid a collision. Acceptable alternatives are stopping, changing speed, or altering course. If the car does none of those things and either hits the pedestrian or causes the pedestrian to jump out of the way, they have violated the right of way. Arguably (and you can bet the motorist will argue this) the pedestrian chooses to yield the right of way by holding back and allowing the car to pass, the motorist can be grateful and continue. I don’t see anything in the statute about “scaring the pedestrian into not moving” (though I think there should be). If the pedestrian isn’t in a position that the car needs to take some action, the motorist doesn’t need to. They should, and if the pedestrian does what they’re legally allowed to, the motorist might be in a world of hurt, but that doesn’t mean that they legally have to. Note that bills have been brought up before the assembly to specifically require a stop, but I don’t think any have made it out of committee. (And not for the reason that the code already requires a stop.)

I don’t think your definition of yielding the right of way is correct. If the driver never slows down, they haven’t yielded. If the ped is in the crosswalk, the law requires yielding from the driver. Yielding can’t mean “relying on the other party to avoid the collision”, in this case, relying on the ped not to cross. I can’t quickly find a good definition of yield (there’s nothing in the VA drivers manual, though the example make it clear that yielding to someone else doesn’t mean relying on that someone else to avoid the collision), but hopefully someone else here can help me out.

[mstone]

@baiskeli 52445 wrote:

Or even requires the pedestrian to stop.

Correct, but hard to demonstrate that the pedestrian felt it necessary to stop to avoid a collision (as opposed to visibly jumping out of the way to avoid being hit). Motorist’s lawyer will argue that he was encouraged to proceed because the pedestrian stopped and appeared to be voluntarily yielding the right of way. It’s unlikely that anyone would want the pedestrian to be called to testify at traffic court.

@dasgeh 52452 wrote:

I don’t think your definition of yielding the right of way is correct. If the driver never slows down, they haven’t yielded. If the ped is in the crosswalk, the law requires yielding from the driver. Yielding can’t mean “relying on the other party to avoid the collision”, in this case, relying on the ped not to cross. I can’t quickly find a good definition of yield (there’s nothing in the VA drivers manual, though the example make it clear that yielding to someone else doesn’t mean relying on that someone else to avoid the collision), but hopefully someone else here can help me out.

That’s the opposite of what I said; the person with the right of way is the one that relys on the other to avoid collision. Yielding the right of way is a legal concept, not a physical concept. To review: “right of way”==”legal right to proceed, others must take action to avoid collision”. “Yield the right of way”==”give the right of way to someone else”. There’s no physical action associated with yielding the right of way, no “right of way baton” to pass. There are various actions that one can take to avoid a collision which would be consistent with respecting the right of way, but those actions are the result of yielding the right of way, not the act of yielding the right of way. That’s why this is hard to enforce in the absence of a collision or some clear action on the part of the pedestrian demonstrating that the motorist did not respect the right of way. The difficulty is that the pedestrian may voluntarily yield the right of way (you’ve done this if you’ve ever waved on a car, for example) and that’s perfectly legal. So to uphold a failure to yield citation in the absence of a collision, you have to overcome the argument that the motorist did respect the right of way and did successfully avoid a collision, and somehow demonstrate that it was the pedestrian being forced to stop in violation of the right of way which actually avoided a collision.

[dasgeh]

@mstone 52456 wrote:

Correct, but hard to demonstrate that the pedestrian felt it necessary to stop to avoid a collision (as opposed to visibly jumping out of the way to avoid being hit). Motorist’s lawyer will argue that he was encouraged to proceed because the pedestrian stopped and appeared to be voluntarily yielding the right of way. It’s unlikely that anyone would want the pedestrian to be called to testify at traffic court.

That’s the opposite of what I said; the person with the right of way is the one that relys on the other to avoid collision.

If a driver is going, and a ped enters the crosswalk (but not the driver’s lane) when the driver has enough time to slow/stop to avoid the collision, and the driver does not slow, assuming, as in your example, that the ped is not going to move, then the driver is, in fact relying on the ped to avoid the collision, and hence, not yielding. That’s my point.

[mstone]

@dasgeh 52512 wrote:

If a driver is going, and a ped enters the crosswalk (but not the driver’s lane) when the driver has enough time to slow/stop to avoid the collision, and the driver does not slow, assuming, as in your example, that the ped is not going to move, then the driver is, in fact relying on the ped to avoid the collision, and hence, not yielding. That’s my point.

If the pedestrian isn’t moving, there’s no possibility of collision (de facto, as there wasn’t a collision). You’re basically arguing that if the pedestrian did move, then the motorist would have had a collision, because the motorist wouldn’t have moved. Whereas the motorist would argue that had the pedestrian been moving, then the motorist would have acted to avoid the collision. Since neither of those things actually happened, how should a judge rule? Your assessment is clearly that the motorist didn’t leave enough time to stop, but why should the court accept your assessment over that of the motorist, who claims that he did have enough time to stop, had it been necessary? As much as I’d like the statute to prohibit motorists from intimidating pedestrians into giving up the right of way, that language simply isn’t there. And, again, note that there are parts of the code which require specific actions such as slowing or stopping in addition to yielding the right of way, so there seems to be a pretty clear legislative intent to not require that in this part of the code.

Also, note that just as when I argue about what cyclists must do, I’m only talking about what motorists must do, not what they should do. This is why I get so steamed when a police agency does something completely idiotic like tell people they shouldn’t slow down or stop for pedestrians. There’s a difference between what safety and prudence suggest you should do, and what the law requires you to do, and people should always behave safely and prudently first, and only then consider what they can get away with under the law. And our police agencies should be primarily emphasizing everyone’s responsibility to be safe and alert, and also warning people about the consequences of unsafe and inattentive behavior, rather than focusing on what people can get away with most of the time (until something goes wrong and somebody ends up dead).

[dasgeh]

@mstone 52520 wrote:

If the pedestrian isn’t moving, there’s no possibility of collision (de facto, as there wasn’t a collision). You’re basically arguing that if the pedestrian did move, then the motorist would have had a collision, because the motorist wouldn’t have moved. Whereas the motorist would argue that had the pedestrian been moving, then the motorist would have acted to avoid the collision. Since neither of those things actually happened, how should a judge rule? Your assessment is clearly that the motorist didn’t leave enough time to stop, but why should the court accept your assessment over that of the motorist, who claims that he did have enough time to stop, had it been necessary?

I just think you’re wrong on this one. The ped had to move to get into the crosswalk. The ped stopped moving to avoid the collision, because the driver wasn’t yielding the right of way. It’s the natural reading of the law, because otherwise, it would be meaningless. Do you have any legal basis (e.g. court opinion) to back yourself up? I know of jurisdictions that have requirements to stop, but none that have “slow and yield ROW”, presumably because that would be redundant.

I totally agree with your also. The police telling drivers to act contrary to the law is ridiculous.

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