Pedestrian crosswalk stop requirement
What the county recorded
This item is not from the published agenda
It is a stretch of the recording that this archive identified as a separate matter — a call to order, a recess, or something taken up that the agenda does not list. There is no official title, no staff recommendation and no disposition, because the county never recorded one. Everything below is inferred.
The source document
The county’s agenda for Board of County Commissioners, Dec 16, 2024
The published PDF. Its text could not be extracted — it is an image-only scan — so nothing in it is searchable here, but it reads normally.
The county’s minutes for Board of County Commissioners, Dec 16, 2024
The published PDF, as served by the county. This item is one entry in it.
What was said
Machine transcription of 5m of recording, with speaker names inferred from voice matching. 40% of 25 lines carry a name. It shows what was said, not what was decided, and both the words and the names can be wrong.
So the next issue came to us from our uh bicycle pedestrian advisory committee. We have a uh that set up in the county. The commissioner set that up. Uh and this deals with uh pedestrian uh safety driver requirements. So current law requires cars to slow down and yield to pedestrian right-of-way. again, yield, uh if there's no one there. What they have seen and and say if we were to change the law to require cars to actually
stop um uh at a crossing for uh the pedestrians, uh it could you know lower a lot of accidents with bicycles and and pedestrians if that just that tweak in the law were to occur.
While pushing strollers to Is that doable by county ordinance or is it
you've regulated the field in general law. So and we'd be changing state law by local ordinance. So it probably has some problems. I I'm not prepared to say we couldn't but Is that is that just an opinion? That's just an opinion. So we can do it. Madam
Clerk. The the one fear I have with this one there, on the two lane road it's easier to do. But if you've got like a six lane highway nineteen et cetera and you expect someone on the third lane over to see someone coming over and you get someone to slam on their brakes coming through, I mean I've been hit three times in the rear, stopped on these busy roads, you gotta create more accidents and Uh we've ever had before as well. So you can you can weigh this one through as far
as
you
want to
Uh your rear ended. Yeah.
Sure.
On a three lane. Uh my name's Brian Michaels. Uh Chair of the B PAC committee for uh Pasco County.
Explain what that is that they don't know.
Uh Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee. Uh so a three lane road would normally probably have a traffic light. Current state law requires vehicles to stop and remain stopped. For a pedestrian that's in That's right. Uh uh section of roadway until they're on the other half of the roadway. So section A. dealed with that. That was changed in two thousand eight. Section B. Deals with crosswalks that have a sign that says
you must stop. four pedestrians in a crosswalk. every other crosswalk in the state of Florida. It is yield. Yield means you either slow down Or maybe stop. So it would be a lot easier for law enforcement. Because Yield. It's an interpretation of law enforcement to say that you slowed down for a crosswalk. It there is no interpretation of stop. Now every school in the state
of Florida has crossing guards. When they go out with their A orange vest. They have a sign that says Stop. They don't have a sign that says yield. It says stop. What happens at school crossings? Or playgrounds. that don't have a crossing guard there. Twenty four seven.
or uh seniors or Anybody on a bike that has to go through a crosswalk
They have to uh rely on the vehicle to yield to a pedestrian. So um It's much easier if it's a stop. It follows sections. uh s uh seven A and B in our current law. And um It's the the closest state. that has a similar law is the state of Georgia. It was changed in nineteen ninety five. Um and it's it's it just follows is
logical.
You know, I always thought that you had to stop when someone was in the crosswalks. I thought that was our law already.
No, it's yield. If you if you look at
a lot
if you look at it uh at uh if you look at the law it's it says that you must you yield and like possibly stop for a pedestrian. So it it and again it'll it's I can't tell you how many lives it's gonna save. But I can guarantee you it will prevent uh and save lives in the state of Florida. State of Florida also has one of the worst track records for bicycle and pedestrian fatalities.
Yes. Thank you.
So this is a back
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