Just because the coronavirus pandemic has shifted much thinking about safety in Southern California to issues of virus containment does not mean pedestrian safety and car accident prevention should lose consideration. Putting the two public health issues together—COVID-19 prevention and pedestrian safety—some cities in California have started to install touch-free crosswalk signals to ensure that pedestrians and bicyclists do not avoid using traffic safety signals in order to avoid risk of exposure to the coronavirus.
It is important for pedestrians and bicyclists to understand ways of staying safe and avoiding motor vehicle collisions, and it is also critical to understand how comparative fault can reduce a pedestrian or bicyclist’s damages award if they do not abide by traffic rules.
How Touch-Free Pedestrian and Bicyclist Signals can Help to Prevent Intersection Accidents