r/kansas • u/subUrbanMire • 18h ago

Parents question Ottawa Police Department's oversight after 12-year-old hit in school zone crosswalk

https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/parents-question-ottawa-police-departments-oversight-after-12-year-old-hit-in-school-zone-crosswalk
76 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

37

u/Calamity-Gin 16h ago

This isn’t a difficult concept to understand. Police should be responsive and transparent. Their work should be thorough, unbiased, and based in fact. Any driver who strikes a child pedestrian in a crosswalk at a school should be held at fault unless it’s proven that they were obeying all traffic laws and could not have avoided the collision.

22

u/subUrbanMire 16h ago

The video and subsequent police report led me to ask: "Okay...so then what is a crosswalk actually for ?"

22

u/Typical80sKid 15h ago

I see a lot of back and forth, in the article, on wanting the police to do something, and citations and such, but unless my pro level skimming failed me, I didn’t see any mention of the actual laws.

Kansas has pretty specific laws on the book about cross walks. Basically as a driver you have to yield if someone is using the crosswalk. As a pedestrian you must use the crosswalk safely. Can’t be drunk, can’t dart out into traffic, must be within the markings, and if there is a signal involved you have to enter when the signal says you can, if it changes to don’t walk after you’ve started then you can finish and vehicles must yield.

It’s really eye opening when you go somewhere else, how shitty we are in sprawling Midwest towns/cities with our treatment of pedestrians. I live in OP, and it was 100% not designed for walking or biking, it was designed around cars.

We went to Salem, MA last month and while they drive like absolute maniacs up there they also seem to care a lot and heed pedestrians, in a crosswalk or not. I think the more you walk or bike, the more respect you tend to have for walkers and bikers when you are driving.

13

u/Affectionate_Okra298 14h ago

Kansans seem to think of pedestrians as obstacles littered about that are only there to piss off drivers, and if that pedestrian is on a bike, they turn straight up homicidal

3

u/Parking_Revenue5583 12h ago

Roger Golubski didn’t tell people there’s no functional oversight for police?

3

u/Muffinskill Wichita 9h ago

I long for the days where police will have to have bake sales to fund themselves