[conspire] New California laws, 2018

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Paul Zander (paulz at ieee.org):

> The old rule certainly was counter-intuitive.    

The old statute (California Vehicle Code section 21456(b), prior to
AB-390's 'patching') more-or-less made sense back in days of yore when
it was written, because that was before crosswalk countdown timers.

According to the _LA Times_, the timers went statewide rapidly after a
2001 pilot project in San Francisco, are now near-ubiquitous, and had
two major effects.  One, car/pedestrian conflicts in the intersections
went way down, and injury collisons fell 50%.  Two, pedestrians now
reliably intuit whether they can safely make it accord based on seconds
remaining, and aren't dependent on just the flashing 'Dont Walk'.
Unfortunately, the law hadn't caught up to these changed facts.

Here's the amendment:
http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180AB390
Notice that if there's no countdown timer, it's still a $250 jaywalking
ticket to begin crossing if there's a flashing 'Don't Walk' or
equivalent and _no_ countdown timer.