Ouch weblog: individual blog entry
21 Apr 06, 1:01 PM - Fined for crossing the road too slowly
Posted by Lady Bracknell
Lady Bracknell is sure she isn't the only Ouch reader who rarely manages to make it all the way across a road before the lights change. She wouldn't, however, expect to be financially penalised for being mobility impaired.
But that's exactly what's happened in Los Angeles to 82-year old , who has been fined 114 dollars for taking too long to cross a street. No, really. The ticketing officer told her she was "obstructing traffic".
Questioned about the incident, police sergeant Mike Zaboski said, "I'd rather not have angry pedestrians. But I'd rather have them be alive".
Would it, then, be entirely unreasonable of Lady Bracknell to retort that she would personally rather be angry than alive but stuck on the wrong side of the street?
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At 01:41 PM on 21 Apr 2006, wrote:
Thought I would make a comment on the new improved weblog! Hope it works out well Ouch team!
On the subject of the lady getting fined, that's very steep for the lady to pay! Stingey lot!
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At 03:15 PM on 21 Apr 2006, Chris Page wrote:
Reminds me of the bit in Beverly Hills Cop where Eddie Murphy - having been arrested for being thrown through a plate glass window - says to the Policeman:
"What do you call being thrown from a moving car - jaywalking?"
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At 05:03 PM on 21 Apr 2006, Rabid Learner wrote:
Crikey, that's outrageous!
It's the cars that are the obstruction, dontchaknow!
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At 12:08 AM on 23 Apr 2006, nuttysurvivor wrote:
She's lucky she doesn't live in this country. She'd probably find herself on the wrong end of an asbo prohibiting her from using traffic crossings.
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At 07:00 PM on 18 May 2006, Just Another Nameless US Diabled Veteran wrote:
Here's a happy solution:
Throw Mr. "I'd rather ticket disabled people into starvation than help them" into leg irons with a 6" chain between them, and see how his happy ass can hobble across town before the light changes on each street. If he fails to make it, $114 is deducted from his paycheck for each time, and I can guarantee that he will be feeling some similar pains of the disabled with his legs bound in such a position within a couple of blocks.
Or have him act as a cross-walk guard, who has to get his charges across that exact same street before the light changes, or he gets a $114 fine for each person not safely across. If it means he has to bodily carry people across, so be it.
Who am I kidding? No judge would have the cojones to put the policeman in his place (heh, at least not in LA, undoubtedly the worst cops in the US even than NYPD), and the disabled elder is abused further by the bureaucracy, by being expected to jump through hoops and spend more money and time...walking and maybe riding on a bus across town to get to the courthouse to defend herself, depending on how small her pension is and how much support she can get if she has to cross streets like that. Really, America has become the "Land of the FUBAR and the Home of the Bureaucratic".
It is obvious the policeman (Mike Zaboski), never was in the Boy Scouts, and probably would have given any troop a ticket as well if they had bothered to help more than the waste of air in LA cop uniform.
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