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NJ Legislator Proposes Fine For Walking While Phone-Distracted (philly.com)
schwit1 writes: A bill proposed this week by Assemblywoman Pamela R. Lampitt (D., Camden) would impose a fine of up to $50 and possibly 15 days in jail for pedestrians caught using their cellphones without hands-free devices while walking on public sidewalks and along roadways. If the bill becomes law, 'petextrians' — people who text while walking — would face the same penalties as jaywalkers in New Jersey. From the article: Researchers say distracted walkers are more likely to ignore traffic lights or fail to look both ways before crossing the street. ... Lampitt said she wants that message to hit home in New Jersey for pedestrians and motorists who could easily be distracted while looking at mobile devices. Her bill, however, faces an uncertain future in the Legislature. It has not been posted for a vote and Lampitt acknowledged she might have a tough time getting it passed." Distracted pedestrians surely pose some risks, but they don't budge the needle compared to overbearing officialdom.
to give police to arrest someone for some other pretense.
Distracted pedestrians (and anyone else distracted while doing something else) just need to be properly assigned responsibility for the problems they cause.
If a distracted pedestrian, not obeying traffic laws gets mowed down, then that is on them, 100%. Driver walks away scot-free. If they cause an accident, they pay for damages, 100%. If they cause any financial hardship on anyone for their distractedness, they own it, 100%.
Oh, but wait. That requires a society that recognizes personal responsibility and this is the US we are talking about here. Never mind silly old me.
This has been shown again and again with drivers, I do not see how it would be different for walkers.
In a state where everything is legislated, the people in it are assumed by the state to be mindless slaves who would stop functioning without constant instruction in minute details of life. And they are probably correct in that judgement.
You should take these stories personally. I think it would be difficult to over react. You can see countless examples of such laws already enacted.
You think you're so intelligent that such laws would never affect you. But there are such laws that affect you.
Instead of making excuses for the signs of your government's tyranny, you should inventory the examples.
I think most anyone who has the discipline to do this will come to the conclusion that they are not a respected citizen of the state.
Maybe if enough people were to harden themselves in this way there could be an opportunity for freedom for those who deserve it.
If you're not jaywalking, what's the problem? If you are jaywalking, then you can already be cited for jaywalking.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Same penalty for jaywalkers, as in a law that cops would never enforce. The point of it being, if you get hit by a car while the driver's doing nothing wrong while you jaywalk or ped-text, you are presumably liable because your violation of the law was the cause.
In practice the driver's always the one that becomes liable, thanks to civil court in this sue-happy country. In theory though, this would be a nice law protecting everyone from getting sued by stupid people for the consequences of their stupidity.
Why fine them? seem to me this is job security for lawyers. We can always use more lawyers..
Jack of all trades,master of none
Who spend their time diddling away at ridiculous bills when there are real problems to be solved.
Wow! Lobbying really works, doesn't it.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
It's worth noting here that all laws are, by their very definition, "evil". If such a term truly exists, then surely it applies to the deprivation of natural rights by a foreign body.
Now, in some cases the alternative is worse than the law; it's a necessary evil. We can all agree that a law prohibiting the taking of a human life for sport to be a better evil than the alternative. However, it doesn't diminish the threat laws impose upon the governed.
I wish more people understood this. At the very least, I wish our law makers understood this rather basic concept. If they did, we might never have to deal with idiotic laws like the one proposed.
Dear Assemblywoman Pamela R. Lampitt, I propose a new law; No legislating while drunk, which you so clearly are if you think this is a good use of the public's energy.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
dictating your lives since you had lives to dictate.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
But it is more logical to apply Darwin's "law", and not fine drivers for knocking them down. The problem will solve itself. If the phone's camera can be turned on while texting, the person might see what is about to hit them. And the front camera can snap the reaction on their face at the last instant. Worth more than a thousand words...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
We have enough laws. Get bent. Keep posting shit like this and my karma is going to go back to Terrible.
+1. It's virtually impossible for a "distracted" pedestrian to injure a driver, but very easy for a driver to kill a pedestrian. Responsibility should fall on those who are creating the most risk for others.
Too many stupid people were hit by cars and ruined it, causing government to step in.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
An earlier proposal — from Ms. Lampitt's fellow female Democrat from Essex — would've made it mandatory for bicycles to be registered in the State.
Kinda reflects badly on the national Party trying to portray itself as the defender of personal freedoms and individual rights.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Pedestrian steps out between two parked vans or trucks, not at a crosswalk, without looking, when you are two feet away, driving the speed limit and there is no room to swerve.
There are still going to be times where it doesn't matter how aware you are, things are still going to jump out in front of you from unseen locations.
But, we already have laws against Jay walking? How does this law fix jaywalkers?
moox. for a new generation.
That's great.
Last time I checked, the danger level of a distracted pedestrian that isn't inside a museum without those velvet ropes was a damage threat of no actual injure and monetary costs not to exceed one latte. It's not like they kill other people, or plow through storefronts, or destroy vehicles worth thousands of dollars and up.
I guess Lampitt is planning her next bill to be the Drunken Walker Bill where if you have an blood alcohol concentration exceeding 0.08 you get a an expensive ticket for drunk walking. Then of course, they'll have to start licensing people to walk, and they'll have to get insurance for it as well or they won't be legally allowed to walk, etc.
This proposed law gets it half right. I'd have no problem with a law that prohibited using electronic devices while crossing streets. But there is no reason to prohibit such activity while walking on public sidewalks. Yes, you might run the risk of bumping into somebody, and if you walk so carelessly as to do that, you might reasonably be charged with creating a public nuisance, but that sort of careless walking doesn't pose nearly the same danger as crossing roads while distracted, and it is absurd to put them in the same category. Extending jaywalking laws to cover walking on the sidewalk goes way too far in restricting people's freedoms. Remember, texting or talking on a cellphone is a means of communication, and communication is an essential component of the First Amendment. Therefore, restrictions on communication should be imposed only when necessary and then such restrictions should be narrowly tailored to accomplish those objectives.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
I live (near) Salt Lake City, and at least in SLC proper, you can already get fined for using a cell phone while walking.
Because jaywalking laws aren't enforced, so we totally need another law. /s
It's like all of the "State Law: Keep right except to pass" signs on the highway here that work soooo well. Nobody keeps right except to pass because it's not enforced, so a new law was passed that mandated these signs being placed on the highway (instead of mandating that the actual law be enforced). Obviously, nobody's driving habits changed.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Unfortunately, physics tends to disagree.
Suppose I'm driving a train and a motorist decides that those gates don't apply to them. It's not like the train stops on a dime. Does this mean that I'm at fault? Does this mean that we should lower all train speeds to a tenth of a mile per hour so that they could reasonably stop in the event that a pedestrian enters their path?
And walking down the sidewalk is a right not a privilege like driving.
Holding a phone to your ear is a matter of free speech, protected by the Constitution.
Details matter... right Mr Pedant?
while walking, please? Sometimes it is hard to walk and breath behind a smoker.
First phones. Next, chewing gum.
Have gnu, will travel.
Pedestrians need to be aware of other pedestrians.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Or maybe - and here's a revolutionary idea, I know - the cops should leave you the fuck alone if you aren't hurting anyone.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
No, we want better government not just throwing the baby out with bathwater thinking that will fix everything.
Laws don't, by themselves, "fix" much of anything. Even though there are laws against it, people still murder.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Without knowing any details... would this have anything to do with the fact that private prison companies pouer a lot of money into politicians? Because it make sense to make ridiculous tough laws if you get money from for-profit prisons...
I like this. The pedestrian crossing the road is sharing the public highway with motorized vehicles; the pedestrian on the side walk is not.
Yes, the authors of the Constitution totally envisioned telephones, especially portable ones that people would have on them at all times.
Imagine someone reading a snail mail letter and walking into the path of a team of horses pulling a heavy wagon. Not much different.
It's another bullshit reason to lawfully stop you which could lead to an arrest if you are founf to have or be doing something else illegal.
Like resisting arrest.
There's absolutely nothing modern about individual legislators introducing stupid, often unConstitutional, bills. Or, for that matter, getting them passed. This doesn't depend on party, although Republican idiots and Democrat idiots do tend to introduce different bills.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
"'If it builds awareness, that's OK,' the lawmaker said. Similar bills have failed recently in New York state, Nevada, and Arkansas."
She's using the wrong tool to build awareness. She has more than hammers, but still insists everything is a nail.
By the age of 18, the average person has created a negative value of $250k for all of society. It takes quite a long time to pay it back. Even in the hypothetically impossible situation where someone does not cause loss when they die, they would still have costed society money without having paid it back yet.
This line of reasoning is a bit of a slippery slope. Let's accept that a 18-year old cost society $250k to raise. If you view this as $250k debt to society, then you can demand that they pay that back somehow. If they commit suicide, then they've done a moral wrong on par with deliberate debt evasion. They took the money and never paid it back.
However, by that same logic, society can also demand that they do work that pays taxes, and if they don't pay taxes at the rate such that their lifetime contributions exceeds $250k, then they should be forced to work harder, longer, and at higher paying jobs. Obviously there are problems with this. Besides the impossibility of forcing them into higher paying jobs, forcing them to work is indentured servitude, bordering on slavery.
A better way of looking at the problem is to think of the $250k as an investment. Money invested do not have to be paid back if the investment did not profit. Indeed, the majority of people will not contribute their fair share of what was invested in them. However, investors (and governments) don't need them to. As long as there's a few successes that pays out 50x or 100x their investment, the cycle can keep going.
Moreover, it would not be fair to demand $250k from 18-year-olds. None of them asked to have $250k spent on them, and most of that $250k is spent by people other than themselves, often in a wasteful manner, in which the 18-year-olds have no control. If you feel the amount is too large, then blame should be laid at the feet of those spending that money, namely the government and those who elected them.
Jail time!? For walking while on the phone!? While I believe that squishy-yet-breakable pedestrians should be held responsible for accidents, I don't think jail time should be given just for walking and talking on the phone... that's just fucking insanity! You're handing the cops extra reasons to be overly aggressive and find ways to toss people in a jail. What an amazing time to NOT be American.
Next up we should arrest animals that run across the road! Minimum 30 day sentence for those furry fuckers.