A colleague of mine was fined $1500 HKD for jaywalking in Central about a year ago.
A colleague of mine was fined $1500 HKD for jaywalking in Central about a year ago.
I was stopped for jaywalking but argued my way out of it. The police only seem to enforce the jaywalking laws when they are specifically targeting it, i.e. staking out major crossings.
I thought only police and immigration officers could demand to see your ID? Traffic wardens too?
But I suppose if they have no power of arrest there's nothing to stop you running away from them. You might get some jobsworth who follows you and calls the cops...
the really annoying thing about beinf fined in central is two-fold:
a) the green phases are really really short - especially during rush hours it's never enough
b) and a lot worse: there seems to be no fine for stopping your car on a pedestrian crossing, so even if you have green light, people have to file up from both sides to squeeze through the space between cars to get across. of course that slows things down and the short green time does not help. i am reasonably sporty compared to an old granny, but even I stand on the cossing at red light almost every time i attempt to cross it.
(the two crossings i use is between princes building and HSBC and between HSBC and Cheung Kong)
Wouldn't the Traffic Wardens, and indeed the cities coffers be better served, if they focused on drivers who can't be bothered to look 3 inches past the front of their cars, see that they can't clear the intersection without blocking cross traffic and causing gridlock, which is in clear violation by stopping on the cross-hatched yellow lines? Actively fine these morons and they will learn real fast.
So we have plainclothes detectives catching jaywalkers? Jesus.
cookie09 has a point - we're given so little time to cross. My apartment block's on a moderately busy road that I cross at least once a day, possibly 5-6 times. You wait for two minutes then get 10 secs to scurry across like a pathetic little rodent. That's if you can get past the cars on the crossing. In the evening, the wait time nearly doubles. Yellow crossing request boxes have been installed but do nothing except light up.
Near our gaff there is a major junction in Hung Hom that has a relatively complex crossing system. Once a week the traffic wardens and cops will be present and they are always nabbing someone - the someone is usually an old dodderer - the kind that can't see the lights, can't remember what the lights are for or who can only remember a time when the only things on the roads were ponies and carts and sedan chairs. Unfortunately it's these old dodderers that get knocked over every couple of weeks walking into traffic.