Failure to Obey

I’m from North Jersey. This means that I have spent a great deal of time in Manhattan. I love driving, cycling, and walking in Manhattan. Manhattan is a city where true traffic laws are unimportant and as long as you aren’t slowing other people down you are probably ok. As a result, I have gotten into the habit of crossing streets whenever and wherever I damn well please. This has not been a problem in any of the cities I have spent time. I was therefore very surprised when I was approached by three police officers on foot after crossing a traffic free street against the light in Bethesda recently. Each of the officers reprimanded me for violating the traffic laws and one wrote me this warning.



It says, “Pedestrian Warning : Failure to obey pedestrian control signal: Pedestrian may not start to cross the roadway in the direction of a solid ‘don’t walk’ signal or ‘upraised hand’ signal’ Penalty:$40 or up to $500”.

Luckily the officers chose to spare me any monetary fine, however I was annoyed to have to deal with police for walking across a street. Now it would seem to me that the Bethesda Police Department should have better things to do than to threaten pedestrians with fines for crossing streets. In fact, I don’t see how I could do anyone harm by crossing a street, other than by a car crashing into me and denting its bumper. Ultimately though, I think I would have the worse end of that deal. I think taking on that risk should be my decision. I guess in Bethesda pedestrians have the right of way, unless they’re in the way, in which case they have the right to remain silent.