Pedestrians are fine, don't fine pedestrians | WalkSydney

I wrote a piece Pedestrians are fine, don't fine pedestrians at WalkSydney.

The Sydney Morning Herald presents an opinion that It’s futile and yet police persist in fining jaywalkers. This is our sad reality, pedestrians, who cannot of themselves do much damage, are fined, while cars, which can kill in the blink of an eye, proceed unscathed.

The stated argument for criminalising “jaywalking” (not an actual crime, but rather a slander on people crossing spaces that used to be free to cross) is that in an environment where automobile drivers only pay attention to lightbulbs, rather than the environment around them, people would be at risk for crossing against said lightbulbs. And so to prevent such risk, jaywalking must be made illegal. While actual pedestrians are the first to recognise that drivers pay less attention to the world around them than they should, this is not despite lightbulbs, it is because of them. The traffic signs, signals, and markings are themselves a distraction from human-to-human interaction, the eyelock we engage in before crossing paths in humane environments.