What use is a law if nobody bothers to enforce it?
Case in point: a story in today's Daily News there was a story about a "Jeep v pedestrian" crash that sent two young girls from the crosswalk to the hospital. Compounding the tragedy, the LAPD looked at the crash description and decided that nobody was at fault. First, let's look at the crash description:
The girls — ages 10 and 12 — were in a marked crosswalk on Laurel Canyon Boulevard near Archwood Street when a Jeep Wrangler hit them around 7:20 p.m., said Detective Bill Bustos of the Los Angeles Police Department's Valley Traffic Division...
..."He was just driving down the street and unfortunately, did not see the girls," Bustos said. "The girls, when they were crossing the street, we don't know if they saw the car."
I guess it was just an accident, then. No harm, no foul.
California Vehicle Code Section 21950 (a) states unambiguously:
The driver of a vehicle shall yield the right-of-way to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within any marked crosswalk or within any unmarked crosswalk at an intersection, except as otherwise provided in this chapter.
I checked the rest of the chapter. I didn't see anything about saying one "didn't see the girls" after the crash.
