The Breakdown of Northwestern Civilization: No Respect for Traffic Laws

The City of Portland has announced that it is funding a stepped-up campaign to arrest and ticket people for running red lights. All the talk is on the irresponsibility of drivers, their unsafe actions, etc. But did any official give thought to the reason this is happening? There is a consistent pattern of increasing disrespect for traffic laws in general, and it can be traced back almost twenty years to the building of the downtown Tri-Met mall.
About six years ago I was on a Town Hall show with then-Chief of Police Potter. I had been captured on camera jaywalking in the middle of the block from the Galleria to the parking garage across Morrison, along with many other people crossing here, crossing there, wherever they wanted. The chief made the point that deliberate violation of jaywalking laws was leading directly to a breakdown in respect for law and, by extension, Western Society.
He was partly right, because the point I was making was that it was stupid to wait for a walk signal when there was a mere twenty feet to the other side, no traffic to avoid. We were both correct because the jaywalking law itself was poorly considered and as written was not enforceable. It simply demands blind obedience; no consideration to the safety issue and the actual traffic at hand. The law assumes that Portlanders are inherently too stupid to determine when it is safe to cross the street.
Rewind to the building of the Tri-Met mall in the mid-seventies. Back then, people obeyed signals. There were few bicycles on the street, and all pedestrians waited for the lights. If they didn't, there was real risk of a ticket. But as SW 5th and 6th and all the cross streets were torn up, the signals continued to operate even though most had no traffic to control! So people started ignoring those lights. A few tickets were given, but the victims argued in court that there was no rational reason not to cross when there was no cross street, and won their cases. The word came down at police headquarters not to ticket jaywalkers any more, unless the people were blatantly unsafe. Eventually even those people stopped getting tickets and by the 1990s it was official but unstated policy not to waste police time on jaywalkers at all.
My argument on Town Hall was that the City Council should simply rewrite the law to prohibit any pedestrian from impeding the lawful progress of any vehicle. That would have legalized crossing any street at any time unless there was a motor vehicle whose progress would be impeded if it were necessary to slow down to avoid the jaywalker. Was this too much to ask? Could not the City Attorney translate this concept into legalese sufficiently well to create an enforceable law?
Well, it didn't happen and the next evolution of the problem was the increasing number of bicyclists who could also see from their perch, high upon that bicycle seat, where the street was clear and where it wasn't. Of course the professionals, bike messengers, could see as well and became quite adept at zipping all over downtown, dealing with the cars as the plodding blocks of sludge they were. So they, and the amateur riders (commuters) followed suit in blowing off the traffic lights. Meanwhile, a new class of jaywalkers appeared: the arrogant marchers who didn't even care if they were impeding the motor vehicles. We drivers were expected to let them stride right across, facing a red light, as 2,000 pound hunks of metal and plastic hurtled toward them at twelve to twenty miles per hour. The polite ones would make a little skip, a half-hearted attempt at moving out of the way, hoping that the car was not driven by some psychopath at the end of his rope, looking to collect a couple of "points."
Combine all these elements over time, mixing well with people in their early 20s or younger who have never known a time when people didn't jaywalk, assuming it is their right. Eventually the final straw: drivers oppressed by seemingly useless and unenforced laws take up the behavior too -- running red lights. Portland's long-standing and extremely wise decision to keep both sides of an intersection red for a couple of seconds contributed to the margin of safety and has probably both contributed to the problem and kept down the number of accidents. This margin of safety is missing in cities like Los Angeles, where the red on one side produces an immediate green to the other.
Most drivers know when it is safe to violate speed and signal laws. The National Motorist Association has funded studies to demonstrate that the most any jurisdiction should expect is 85% of the traffic complying with speed limits, unless they are obviously set too low. The same 85% is willing to make a right turn on red without a full stop when it is clearly safe to do so. Yet the law says no and a ticket is always a risk. But bicyclists and pedestrians are seldom at risk of anything but their health when they do as they please. What must logically follow is drivers realizing that there is no reason not to proceed on a red light when they decide it's okay.
This situation is NOT going to change without a serious rewrite of the city's traffic laws, coupled with intense education through PR campaigns and enforcement of new laws based on a standard of punishing unsafe behavior while permitting safe behavior. Even though this gives more discretionary power to police officers on the street, and has a chance of increasing court challenges of traffic citations, I believe that eventually the unsafe behavior would decrease, along with the court challenges.
The key standard in the new laws would be "unsafely impeding the lawful progress of anyone." That "anyone" is a pretty general term for a legal system to handle, but it would allow prosecution of skateboarders and rollerskaters who cause problems for pedestrians, yet not those who do not scare or otherwise impede people walking on the sidewalks. The bicyclists could expect tickets and so could jaywalkers, but never when the streets and sidewalks are relatively empty and there is nobody to impede.
Unfortunately, in my middle age I am now too cynical to believe that such a proposal could be intelligently debated and ultimately become the law of the land. So expect things to get worse, folks, and watch out for me. I'm in my car, just waiting for that idiot to come along when I have time to spare and don't mind a lot of paperwork.

email mp@moonmac.com.