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The the Chicago Police Division didn’t recognize protestors efforts to make automobiles truly cease at an often-run red light final week. The Chicago Police Division’s resolution? Simply let the sunshine run inexperienced for 5 minutes. Apparently, they determined it was higher to maroon pedestrians on the aspect of a busy 10 lane highway than maintain drivers accountable to present visitors legal guidelines. And the worst half is, the town appears to have signed on with the choice.
This story begins with the visitors dying of Gerardo Marciales, who was hit by a purple mild runner as he tried to cross Chicago’s large 10-lane highway, DuSable Lake Shore Drive at Balbo Drive, to entry a biking path in February of this yr. Pedestrians are given solely 45 seconds to cross this 125-foot stretch of concrete that options a number of the heaviest visitors within the metropolis.
In response to Marciales dying, the town put up versatile plastic posts within the median to forestall drivers within the left-hand flip lane from going straight, however that does nothing in regards to the purple mild working which is endemic to this crossing, based on Streetsblog Chicago:
Main the cost to spotlight the Balbo/DLSD purple light-running drawback has been Mike Perrino, who works as a Segway tour information by day and tweets beneath the deal with Segway Batman (however is extra typically seen driving a hoverboard electrical unicycle). He has organized volunteers to maintain counts of how widespread it’s for drivers to disobey the visitors sign. For instance, throughout a current five-hour interval, he noticed 1,827 drivers working the purple whereas pedestrians and bike riders had a stroll sign. That’s, breaking the regulation virtually appears to be the rule quite than the exception. This extraordinarily unsafe scenario is illustrated within the video beneath.
Activist Mike Perrino held his occasion final Friday, and the police response to protestors forcing drivers to really cease at a authorized purple mild was lower than passable.
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See, in CPD officers’ eyes, it was the protestors and the pedestrians they protected who were holding up traffic by stranding red light runners in the cross section. The scofflaws stopped by protestors after blowing through a legal red light blocked traffic of eastbound drivers turning left onto the northbound side of Lake Shore. Police responded, not by cracking down on drivers putting pedestrians at risk and breaking traffic laws, but by manually controlling the light, keeping it green for drivers for five minutes. One protestor caught the cops admitting to this claim:
From Streetsblog:
“If they hadn’t run the red light and stopped behind the stop line, the turning drivers would be able to proceed uninterrupted,” the volunteer notes in the video. “But because people ran the red light and stopped in the middle of the intersection, in the middle of the crosswalk, they were the ones causing traffic [jams].”
“Pedestrians are usually not visitors – automobiles are visitors?” the volunteer asks the officer sarcastically. The cop nods.
On Saturday afternoon, Perrino tweeted that the town was nonetheless manually controlling the visitors sign, creating lengthy delays for pedestrians and bike riders.
The message from the town of Chicago and police is evident: In the event you’re outdoors of a automobile, you’re by yourself.