{"id":2556,"date":"2010-02-01T09:08:57","date_gmt":"2010-02-01T13:08:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=2556"},"modified":"2010-02-01T10:11:37","modified_gmt":"2010-02-01T14:11:37","slug":"the-bureaucratic-response-to-pedestrian-fatalities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2010\/02\/01\/the-bureaucratic-response-to-pedestrian-fatalities\/","title":{"rendered":"The bureaucratic response to pedestrian fatalities"},"content":{"rendered":"

Along with the politicians’ leap to regulate<\/a>, the bureaucracy is responding in a highly predictable way to the high number of pedestrian fatalities in the Toronto area this year: ticketing jaywalkers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

I don\u2019t mean to minimize the impact of these accidents. Several years ago, someone very close to me was killed by a car while crossing the street. Without going into the details of the incident, I can tell you that I understand firsthand the pain of losing a loved one in a sudden, senseless way.<\/p>\n

Yet, it\u2019s no salve for a mourning family to know that the men in blue are out making a show of ticketing jaywalkers (and at intersections nowhere near where the fatal accidents took place, no less). That\u2019s not education. It\u2019s wasting valuable resources for the sake of appearing to be \u201cdoing something.\u201d<\/p>\n

The one sensible bit of advice for pedestrians I\u2019ve heard come out of the recent rash of deaths is this: Don\u2019t assume it\u2019s OK to cross just because you have a green light (or friendly white walking man) on your side. Look around with your own eyes. Check the intersection and take a glance behind your back. In other words, don\u2019t blindly rely on someone or something else — a driver or a traffic indicator — to keep you safe.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, it\u2019s precisely the opposite of the message the police are sending every time they dramatically nab a pedestrian for not slavishly following the rules. Go figure.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I drive into downtown Toronto a couple of times each week. Every day, I see pedestrians doing stupid, dangerous things. Every week, I see drivers going too fast, making sudden lane changes, and turning without signalling or appearing to visually check before turning. Given all that, it’s amazing that there aren’t more<\/em> accidents.<\/p>\n

Posting police officers on busy intersections to hand out jaywalking tickets is an almost complete waste of time and effort, but (as so often is the case) it provides a visible mark that the city is doing something<\/em> about the problem. The fact that the something<\/em> is useless doesn’t deter the bureaucracy: that’s a feature, not a bug. No newspaper or TV reporter is going to be able to say the city isn’t doing something<\/em>. Mission (bureaucratically) accomplished.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Along with the politicians’ leap to regulate, the bureaucracy is responding in a highly predictable way to the high number of pedestrian fatalities in the Toronto area this year: ticketing jaywalkers. I don\u2019t mean to minimize the impact of these accidents. Several years ago, someone very close to me was killed by a car while […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6,28],"tags":[111,322,207],"class_list":["post-2556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-cancon","category-media","tag-cars","tag-nannystate","tag-toronto"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-Fe","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2556"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2559,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2556\/revisions\/2559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}