A lesson from the Golden State on how to save lives one crosswalk at a time

Having recently returned from a week in California’s Silicon Valley, I can faithfully report that news of its demise is greatly exaggerated. From San Jose to San Francisco, the place is still quite overrun with young, smart people dreaming up new things to do with computers and making large fortunes in the process.

The coastline is still breathtaking; the giant sequoia trees still, well, giant; the sprawling residential neighborhoods filled with modest bungalows selling for king’s ransoms; and the restaurant menus stuffed with vegan, gluten-free and humanely raised, organic foodstuffs. If only the Elon Musks of the world had succeeded in transplanting more of these lotus eaters to Texas and other distant lands, the traffic on “the 101 (as U.S. Route 101 is known) wouldn’t be quite so awful, no matter what liberal policies Alphabet or Apple or Adobe set regarding remote work.

But here’s where I had a revelation. At some point during those seven days of explorations, perhaps it was our journey to one of those tourist magnets like Half Moon Bay, Muir Woods or the In-N-Out Burger, I drove my sensible rental car through an intersection where I could see in my rearview mirror a man screaming at me and shaking his fist. Coming from

Baltimore, I was reflexively unimpressed by this display. I was tempted to lean out the car window and tell him to yell with greater conviction and perhaps armament next time (“If you don’t mention my mother, it just doesn’t count,” I might have shouted helpfully). But my daughter, whom I was visiting, quickly corrected me. “Dad,” she said. “He was about to cross the street. You should have stopped. That was on you.”

First, let me assure you the hot-headed pedestrian in question was not yet in the crosswalk. I may have taken high school driver’s education on a pass-fail basis, but even I am not that reckless. Rather, he was merely walking on the sidewalk toward the intersection. Yet, apparently, in Northern California, this is widely regarded as staking a claim, and drivers are expected to stop immediately. My eyes were opened. As we continued our travels, I saw the pattern over and over again. One braked not just for traffic lights or stop signs or people in the street ahead of you but for folks who were simply headed toward the intersection. It was a bit like opening doors for strangers even if they trailed far behind you. You were expected to look around. Call it courtesy, civility or safety, it was an acknowledgment that pedestrians truly had the right of way.

At first, I chafed at this disruption in the normal rhythms of life. Let the brave walkers try that in front of Midtown Manhattan taxi drivers, I thought. That would provide an assault on the senses. But the practice grew on me. It was just a matter of greater spatial awareness. It didn’t really slow down our travels, at least not like rush hour or lunchtime at the Eataly food hall. And it was the proper thing to do. U.S. pedestrians deaths recently hit a 40-year high with more than 7,500 killed last year, according to estimates. Why so many fatalities? Because of bad traffic engineering that gives much higher priority to vehicles, the rise of larger, heavier vehicles, our auto-centric culture where drivers (like me) aren’t even thinking about pedestrians and because the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged reckless driving and that pattern has, sadly, remained.

We can’t change all the streets overnight. We’re probably stuck with heavy cars even if we say goodbye to our gas-powered SUVs as electric vehicles become more popular, but we can — and should — think about yielding to pedestrians first. Liberal Californians may lean into entitlement, but they have a point when it comes to a pedestrian-first sensibility. Police aren’t going to be on every corner ticketing aggressive drivers. We have to monitor ourselves. We have to stop being jerks, as my spouse likes to say (for some reason, around me quite frequently). In big European cities, walking or hopping on a trolley or bus is the preferred method of transportation anyway. It doesn’t hurt to get out of our cars and try some healthy hiking or biking — if we can convince fellow motorists to give us space.

Try it, you’ll find it’s actually quite easy. And if all else fails, just ask a family member to nag you from the back seat. I can provide a loaner.