"The segment follows a crosswalk police sting in San Bruno using a man dressed as a bright orange dinosaur. Basically, the guy was impossible to not notice. But in the segment, drivers said they didn't see him. It would be bad enough if they said some version of 'I thought it was someone doing a prank' or 'I was in a hurry' or 'I was scared it was a set up for a car jacking' or anything along those lines. But these drivers were so distracted by their phones, so failing to have any situational awareness, that they literally said they didn't see him."
"The only thing that differentiates these drivers from the one who ran over and killed a two-year-old child in Mission Bay late last month in a crosswalk is dumb luck. Same goes for the driver who killed Wilma Chan in Alameda in a crosswalk. Or the driver who was presumably texting and drifted into the bike lane, killing Greg Knapp. I could rattle off examples all day of distracted drivers who killed people."
"This is what judges, such as Bruce Chan, don't understand. The crime is not running over and killing Ethan Boyes, or Amelie Le Moullac, or the Pinto de Oliveira family. It's playing Russian Roulette with other people. And there must be consequences, no matter how much a driver may regret speeding or killing someone because they were in a hurry or wanted to check a text."
A police sting in San Bruno featured a man in a bright orange dinosaur costume in a crosswalk—nearly impossible to miss. Yet drivers repeatedly claimed they didn't see him, attributing their failure to phone distraction and lack of situational awareness. These incidents mirror fatal crashes involving pedestrians and cyclists, where distracted drivers killed people in crosswalks with little accountability. The core issue isn't visibility or pedestrian behavior; it's driver negligence from phone use. Despite numerous deaths caused by distracted driving, legal consequences remain minimal. Judges and the justice system fail to recognize that distracted driving constitutes reckless endangerment, treating fatal outcomes as accidents rather than consequences of dangerous choices.
#distracted-driving #pedestrian-safety #traffic-enforcement #legal-accountability #phone-use-while-driving
Read at Streetsblog
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