Columnist Susan Snyder: A strident view of safety issue

Friday, Feb. 22, 2002 | 3:29 a.m.

On Friday we learned about a new sting in which local police officers are going to nab valley motorists who don't stop for people in crosswalks.

Didn't see it? Dang. Maybe you should read the Sun on weekdays, too.

A recap for the Sunday-only slackers: Clark County pedestrian deaths are four times higher than they were this time last year. One state safety official calls it "a blood bath."

"It's just death in the streets," said Bruce Mackey, bicycle-pedestrian safety education officer for the Nevada Office of Traffic Safety.

The Safe Community Partnership and Traffic Research Center at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas hired a pair of consultants who came to Las Vegas and taught police officers how to conduct the sting. Plain-clothes cops will walk in crosswalks. Uniformed officers will ticket motorists who don't stop.

The spots will be marked with everything but clowns and sirens. But some motorists still will screw it up.

How to avoid the ambush? Simple. Follow the laws. Drive defensively. Be considerate -- you know, all that driver's ed stuff we learned and promptly ignored.

The law says you can't go around hitting people with your car, truck or Suburban Assault Vehicle. Not even in Las Vegas. Not even if you manage to drive away really fast and convince the cops you thought a brick hit your windshield.

Where, exactly, does it say that? Nevada Revised Statutes 484.3245 reads: "The driver of a motor vehicle shall exercise due care to avoid a collision with a pedestrian."

"It's not legal to hit a pedestrian," Mackey said. "It can't get much clearer than that."

Notice it doesn't say anything about it being OK to hit someone who is not in a crosswalk. It says exercise "due care" to avoid hitting a person anywhere.

Think of it as "do care." Cruising up to an intersection at 50 mph, skidding into the crosswalk and making a right turn without even looking for a person stepping off of the curb is not using "due care." It's thoughtless.

If the light is red, stop before turning right. You won't sprout antlers or quit breathing. Promise. Since you're stopped anyhow, you might as well glance at the traffic light to see whether the little white man is lit before pulling into the crosswalk in front of a person about to step into it.

Traffic lights tell us when to stop and go but also give us other information. The white walking man may not directly apply to your car, but it says, "Yo! Stoopid! The lady on the curb is going to walk!"

Nine Clark County pedestrians had died this year as of Friday afternoon -- a quarter of the number killed in Clark County last year, and February isn't even over.

"Jaywalking" has become the catch-all excuse for motorists who were too inattentive to stop and police who say they can't charge them with anything.

Crossing mid-block is only illegal between adjacent intersections with traffic lights. "Adjacent" means no other streets intersect that road between those lights, Mackey said. And any street intersection is a legal crosswalk, painted or not.

Pedestrians outside crosswalks must yield to oncoming traffic. But motorists also must try to avoid hitting them, no matter where they are. And too many of us are ignoring laws dictating behavior that should come naturally in decent society.