We now know who the so-called pedestrians are. The first court rulings have arrived.
Following the introduction of new traffic regulations, pedestrian crossings have become a hotbed of disputes between drivers and pedestrians. It's now clear who qualifies as an intruder.
Pedestrians were given the right-of-way, and drivers were strictly ordered to yield to them. This caused, and continues to cause, numerous problems and increased the number of road accidents involving pedestrians and drivers in crosswalks. Police repeatedly appealed to both, often to no avail.
The disputes persisted. Pedestrians cited the provision that they had absolute right-of-way, while drivers argued that they were only to yield when a pedestrian expressed a desire to cross the road and was considered an intruder. This was interpreted differently by many, and no one knew exactly what it meant.
The matter appears to have been resolved, as the first court ruling has been issued defining the term intruder. The situation unfolded as follows:
A driver with a dashcam stopped at a pedestrian crossing because a pedestrian was standing on the shoulder. A 54-year-old woman approached from the opposite direction and didn't stop at the crossing, instead crossing it. The courteous driver with the dashcam sent the footage to the police, who charged the woman with failing to yield and issued her a 1,500 złoty fine and 15 penalty points. The woman refused the fine, and the case went to court.
The driver of the car who was issued the fine defended herself in court, claiming she saw the pedestrian on the street. However, in her opinion, the pedestrian wasn't a pedestrian crossing because he was merely standing on the road and wasn't making any movement indicating an intention to cross. However, the court saw it differently. According to the District Court in Piotrków Trybunalski, where the entire situation described occurred, a pedestrian would never have entered the roadway and failed to yield the right-of-way, as they would have been prevented from doing so by oncoming vehicles, whose drivers would have argued that since the pedestrian had not entered the crosswalk, they were not obliged to stop and yield.
Thus, the court in Piotrków Trybunalski refuted the popular notion that an entering pedestrian is someone who has taken a step towards or begun to enter the roadway, a position frequently repeated by various experts, even police officers, driving instructors, and, of course, internet users.
It is now clear who an entering pedestrian is and that they are an entering pedestrian, even if, from a practical perspective, they are not entering but simply standing. Everything seems clear. The problem is that many pedestrians, primarily elderly people or children, stand at crosswalks and engage in conversation with the person they encounter. You can be almost certain that these are not people entering, but legally they are, so they should be allowed to pass, except that they are standing and not crossing. The situation seems stalemate, and unfortunately, this is not uncommon, but rather a common occurrence.
The new regulations have the problem that the city infrastructure has not been adapted to them, they have not been preceded by testing, and there has been no educational campaign to educate the public on when and how to comply with the new regulations and what to do and not to do so that both drivers and pedestrians can live in harmony. However, it is certain that an entering pedestrian is also a standing pedestrian.
This material comes from https://www.jaw.pl
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