Rep. Christopher O’Neil is right to be concerned about safety of pedestrians and liability of motorists at crosswalks. However, his solution to repeal Maine’s law that requires motorists to yield the right of way to pedestrians in marked crosswalks is backwards and it won’t fix the very thing that concerns him – cars hitting and hurting people.

O’Neil was witness to an accident in Saco, where he lives, some years back.

A boy was standing at a corner waiting to cross. A truck in the right lane stopped to let the boy across, but the car traveling in the left lane never saw the boy and hit him. The teenager, O’Neil estimates, may have flown 30 feet, but survived the accident.

This happened at a marked crosswalk, but it is just as likely – if not more likely – to happen at an unmarked corner where cars are under no requirement to be considerate to pedestrians.

If a truck driver, like the one O’Neil saw, was nice enough to let someone cross the road even if he wasn’t required to, how could a driver traveling in the left lane possibly know his intention? How could any driver approaching the intersection know what was going on?

If crosswalks were eliminated, pedestrians would have to wait on street corners until roads were absolutely clear before crossing. That’s unreasonable.

Not everyone can cross at the same speed. The elderly need extra time, as do parents pushing strollers. Young children and joggers may dash across the lanes and may take unnecessary risks if the alternative is to wait.

Marked crosswalks provide a foundation for crossing courtesy, establishing rules of interaction between pedestrians and cars.

O’Neil’s bill, unfortunately titled “An Act To Protect Motor Vehicles From Dangerous Pedestrians,” says it all. Protecting inanimate objects from people is not the work of the Legislature. The concentration is on protecting people.

While O’Neil’s method of dealing with car-pedestrians accidents is wrong, the bill offers an opportunity to look at this issue carefully and work on increasing pedestrian safety.

A joint research project conducted in 1999-2000 by the University of Connecticut and the University of Maine found that roughly 12 percent of all traffic fatalities in Maine each year are pedestrians. Interestingly enough, the majority of those fatalities occur in rural areas – where there are no marked crosswalks.

Supporting O’Neil’s thesis that crosswalks are dangerous places, though, the study found that half of all pedestrian accidents in urban areas do occur in marked crosswalks with traffic lights, much more than at crosswalks without lights or at corners where there are no crosswalks at all.

That’s probably because pedestrians may have a false sense of security and step off the curb into a marked crosswalk if the light is with them. There is an assumption by pedestrians that motorists will surely stop.

That’s a dangerous assumption because not all drivers brake.

Maine doesn’t need to erase its yield-to-pedestrians law. The law is sound.

What we need is greater driver and pedestrian awareness. We need reminders about crosswalk rules. We need towns and cities to properly mark corners. And we need police departments to issue tickets to motorists who refuse to stop and to pedestrians who endanger themselves and drivers.

Eliminating crosswalks and gutting crossing rules will create confusion and people will get hurt.


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