Walking all the way to a crosswalk can be tiring so many people have turned to jaywalking when crossing the street. Unknown to many, jaywalking is a criminal offense in most states but California has introduced a new law that allows pedestrians to legally jaywalk.
The Freedom to Walk Act was signed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom. He said police officers may continue to cite pedestrians crossing a street outside a crosswalk “only when a reasonably careful person would realize there is an immediate danger of a collision.”
The law specifies that pedestrians can jaywalk “as long as it is safe to do so” and goes into effect on January 1, 2023. Although the original jaywalking rules were put in place to enhance pedestrian safety, they often ended up allowing cops to racially profile people and hand out fines to low-income residents.
“For too long, our jaywalking laws were used as a pretext to stop and harass people, especially low-income people and people of color. The reforms enacted in [the law] will put an end to that and, in doing so, make all of California safer for pedestrians,” Zal Shroff, a senior staff attorney at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, said.
State Representative Phil Ting sponsored the legislation and said that it shouldn’t be a “criminal offense to safely cross the street.”
“When expensive tickets and unnecessary confrontations with police impact only certain communities, it’s time to reconsider how we use our law enforcement resources and whether our jaywalking laws really do protect pedestrians,” Ting said.