Angry at crosswalk safety measures
Editor,
Regarding the recent article "Crosswalk safety addressed:"
I am so angry about this program that I cannot even begin to discuss what is wrong with it.
First of all, this is an obvious political move on the part of the city. If the two people had been hit by cars were not foreign delegates, this would not have happened. Having lived in this city for five years now, I can assure readers that a lot of people who live here don't know how to cross the street properly, but neither do people in New York City and they get by just as well.
My biggest problem in this city, however, has never involved the areas that the officers are patrolling (Broughton, Bull, and the general downtown area north of Forsyth). If people want to run into oncoming traffic moving faster than 25mph, let them do it. If we are really concerned with keeping people safe, charging them $145 and up for crossing a street with the same speed limit as a residential street does not seem to show it.
So if officers are ticketing people in areas where traffic should be moving at a speed considered safe for kids to play around, I do not see how this is making us safe. What I have seen has been no less than eight officers standing around on Broughton Street at eight at night watching for people to cross the street without looking. This looks like a tremendous waste of police resources and a relaxing way for officers to make their ticket quotas.
In this economy we cannot afford to waste anything, especially the time of those we have hired to protect us from the real crimes in our city. Pedestrians need to learn to look both ways, and drivers and pedestrians both need to be more respectful and attentive of each other.
Ryan Brown
