Chicago sting is designed to protect pedestrians
I was out of email and internet contact, thank goodness, during all the ghost-bike stuff Lauren reported on below. But looking over the paper that Andrea Kelly’s article was in I found this article about a Chicago sting operation in which an undercover officer acting as a pedestrian steps into a cross walk and then another officer down the road warns or tickets all those drivers that did not stop for the pedestrian.
I have repeatedly asked the Tucson police to something similar with the so-called “three-foot rule,” which requires drivers to give three feet of space when passing a bicyclist. I figure they could balance out the many tickets they give bicyclists for rolling through the stop sign at 4th and University. But they’ve always said it is impossible, for vague reasons that make no sense.
This crosswalk thing is just as good. I used to have to cross at 3rd Avenue and Speedway twice a day and it scared the hell out of me. (A local man died in the crosswalk two years ago and there is a memorial to him there.) Many times I found myself standing in the middle of the street while cars whizzed by me in both directions, and once there was a police officer sitting at the same intersection trying to catch speeders. I asked her why she did not do something about the people who didn’t stop for me in the crosswalk and she laughed at me and drove off.
I don’t want to paint with too broad a brush, but that’s just not the kind of response that engenders in me much respect for the local police, I have to say.
–Erik Ryberg
August 12th, 2010 at 9:49 am
[...] been pleading for this kind of thing for years now (one example), but never thought it would actually [...]