Mind your Ps and Qs (and Crosswalks)

Hey walkers, bikers and drivers: Tomorrow you get a chance to practice some perfection in commuting. EPD’s “downtown team” is “educating the public” tomorrow by focusing on traffic violations in the Broadway and Willamette and Broadway and Olive areas between noon and 5 pm. From the press release:

The officers will be focusing on a variety of traffic violations that seem to contribute the most to crashes or other conflicts between road users.  These violations include traffic control device violations, failure to yield right-of-way violations, speeding, improper turns, failing to signal lane changes or turns, improper lane usage, failing to obey one-way designations, and pedestrians suddenly leaving the curb.

If you need a refresher on Oregon’s crosswalk law, know these things: Every street intersection is technically a crosswalk, marked or not; at a traffic signal, drivers can’t turn until pedestrians are at least 6 feet into the next lane; at other crosswalks, drivers must wait until pedestrians are out of their lane, the lane they’re turning into and the next lane. More details on the law here.

Bikers: Unlike Idaho, in Oregon you CAN’T legally treat a stop sign as a yield sign.

Edit (12:23 pm): Sounds like biking on the sidewalk (also illegal) got a lot of people in trouble last time around.