Free Republic

Car after car sped past Bayport resident Heidi Olivier on Friday afternoon as she tried to cross Minnesota 95, the city’s busy main street. With 2-year-old son Otto in tow, Olivier first checked traffic in both directions. Then she left Otto in his stroller on the sidewalk and stepped off the curb at Second Avenue with her arms out. After verifying that drivers in both directions had seen her and stopped, she headed back to the sidewalk to collect Otto. “Only one car didn’t stop,” she said, after she made it to the west side of the highway just outside...

LGBTQ activists in cities across the country are calling for city officials to create "rainbow crosswalks" to "honor the LGBTQ community." "Rainbow crosswalks" are public crosswalks that have been repainted in rainbow colors, which have been adopted by the LGBTQ community as a symbol of greater acceptance and rights for LGBTQ causes and beliefs. Activists are urging local lawmakers to create the crosswalks through the use of petitions. Currently, one of the cities targeted is Chicago. [Snip] Washington, D.C., already installed temporary rainbow crosswalks honoring transgender persons earlier this year, and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed announced this week the...

In March, the City of Seattle installed one crosswalk boasting Pan-African colors in the Central District. The city is now creating 10 more for pedestrians throughout the neighborhood.The first crosswalk was installed at 23rd Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Way. It is striped with black, green and red — the Pan-African colors. Throughout June, the Seattle Department of Transportation plans to install the new crosswalks, but will first remodel the already painted walkway from March. While the original design had colored lines similar to regular crosswalks, the new ones will have solid colors laterally crossing the street.The city...

In a local story with national implications, Brian Gonzales of Fort Collins will be charged with the death of one person and the injuring of three others in what I strongly suspect is an issue of pedestrians exercising their rights to walk out into a crosswalk in front of oncoming traffic. As reported in the Boulder Daily Camera.... The driver, Brian D. Gonzales of Fort Collins, was issued a summons Tuesday for careless driving resulting in death and three counts of careless driving resulting in serious bodily injury — all class 1 misdemeanor traffic offenses. I say "strongly suspect" because...