Police Step Up Crosswalk Enforcement

By Marcus Gilmer in News on Sep 20, 2010 6:40PM

The State of Illinois recently stepped up to bat in defense of pedestrians with a new law designed to protect pedestrians in crosswalks. At the time of the bill's original passage, there was skepticism about the bill's enforcement. After all, how do you monitor so many of the city's crosswalks? But according to a report by the Tribune's Jon Hilkevitch, Chicago Police are currently operating stings at some of the city's more accident-prone intersections to aid enforcement of the new law. As for the concern's expressed by some lawmakers about signage, that's also being addressed:

The new law may be a surprise to many motorists, in part because it will take some time to replace the thousands of "Yield" signs at intersections across the Chicago area. Among the changes taking place or planned in Chicago as well and area suburbs are new must-stop street signs alerting the public to the crosswalk-rule change; expanded use of crosswalk markers placed in the median of streets near schools, parks and hospitals; and stepped-up police enforcement, officials said.

But the city is also working on improvement in pedestrian behavior. You know the traffic-control personnel in varying states of grumpiness throughout downtown? There will be a new push to make sure they force pedestrians comply with crossing signals so as to help keep intersections clear for traffic and also scale back chances of vehicle-pedestrian accidents.