Commentary: LA invented jaywalking tickets to serve cars. It’s time to give streets back to walkers
by Peter Norton, Los Angeles Times
Oct 14, 2022
3 minutes
California’s new Freedom to Walk Act does not exactly decriminalize jaywalking. It leaves plenty of room for police discretion to ticket unsafe walking, and it doesn’t challenge cars’ domination of city streets. Yet the new law is still a remarkable acknowledgment that we need a future in which walking is accommodated, not deterred, and convenient, not constrained.
Like the removal of an old monument or the renaming of a building, the law signals new possibilities. It follows similar initiatives elsewhere, notably in Virginia, where jaywalking ceased to be a primary offense in
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