New York Sign Language The Signs Are Posted, Will Drivers See Them? By BOB YAMPOLSKY	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
交通無法地帯のニューヨーク ニューヨークの交差点では、横断歩道を歩行者が渡っていても、車は強引に通り抜けます。もし車がきちんと停車しようものなら、歩行者は感謝感激し、ほかの車はクラクションを鳴らしまくります。どうにかしようと市長は対応に乗り出したのですが…

One of the many fond memories I have of Japan is this: walking across streets — even busy city streets — in peace. I am not being facetious when I say this. I mean that it is so nice the way that drivers making a turn at an intersection will, without fail, let pedestrians cross the street first.

I appreciate such things because I am a New Yorker. New York drivers are supposed to stop and let the people cross. That, after all, is what our sign for this month says: "YIELD TO PEDESTRIAN IN CROSSWALK." But New York drivers don't yield to pedestrians. They do not yield because to yield would be to perform a civil, courteous act, which is not allowed on the streets of New York.

To be honest, I am not a great fan of this sign, though I support the message that it carries. For starters, I don't like that singular "pedestrian." When you're speaking generally, you should use the plural. Everyone knows that. But what I like even less about the sign is its modesty. It's too tentative, almost as if it's asking to be ignored: "I'm not a very important sign; you don't have to look at me."

Actually, I don't think it would be accurate to say that New York drivers ignore this sign. I think it would be more accurate to say that New York drivers do not even know it exists. It's reached such a point that when a car making a turn at an intersection actually does come to a full stop to allow people to cross, you'll see a funny sight: pedestrians so surprised and touched that their faces brighten and they raise a hand in salutation, meaning "Thank you, thank you so much."

Another thing you'll sometimes see is the driver of a car that has stopped, motioning impatiently — meaning "I'm letting you cross, so hurry up" — as if he were performing some act of tremendous generosity, instead of simply obeying the law. Even at this, pedestrians wave in gratitude.

But most of the time one of two things happens. Either the people crossing the street are spaced widely enough that the car making a turn at the intersection shoots through an opening among them; or else, if the stream of pedestrians is too thick to shoot through, a car will slow to a crawl, and slowly edge its way across the crosswalk. Needless to say, pedestrians have to stop and wait, both for the first car and for all the other cars that follow it through the breached wall of people.

If a car actually does stop, or just takes too long to get across the crosswalk, the horns of the cars behind it start blaring: "What are you waiting for? Go!"

A couple of weeks ago, on my way to work, I saw a man yelling at the driver of a van that had cut in front of him in a crosswalk. I like people who yell at drivers — the little guy sticking up for his rights — and so when I caught up with him on the pedestrian island in the middle of the avenue, I said, "What an idiot," meaning the driver.

"He almost killed me," the guy said, somewhat in exaggeration. And as we both cast nasty looks at the back of the van, we had the satisfaction of actually seeing a policeman signal the driver to pull over. And we both looked on in wonder as the policeman began the process of writing a ticket.

This was the first time in my life that I had seen a car pulled over for this offense. I was shocked: This is New York. People don't get tickets for something like that. But this is the new New York, where even jaywalkers are ticketed. It turns out that what we saw was part of Mayor Rudy Giuliani's three days of "zero tolerance." For three days police throughout the city actually enforced the traffic laws that drivers routinely ignore.

The mayor had announced his intention to crack down on speeding and other traffic violations a couple of months earlier. He was, as usual, greeted with skepticism: New York drivers obeying traffic laws? Get serious! And it didn't help his cause when, soon after his announcement, a newspaper reporter with a radar gun clocked the mayor's limousine going well above the speed limit. But those three days of zero tolerance seem to have convinced a number of skeptics that the mayor is quite serious about making the roadways safer.

Is it possible to get New Yorkers to be courteous, well-mannered drivers? I doubt it. But even if New York drivers began noticing a few more of the signs posted on the streets, I think it would be a very good thing.

Shukan ST: April 24, 1998

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