Comments by "Laurence Fraser" (@laurencefraser) on "Should jaywalking be legal?" video.
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@FCVP71 actual court ruling in at least one state, and I forget which one it was but the case was interesting as they ended up digging up pre revolution British law as precident: unlawful arrest is functionally kidnapping and you are not only legally within your rights to resist, but aren't liable for injury or property damage caused in the doing unless said damage or injury was intentional, excessive, and obviously unnecessary. And maybe not even then, given that precident on the matter in question in that case was that no punishment at all was levied unless deaths occurred, and even then the crime was manslaughter, never murder.
The details of what was or wasn't permitted outside of property damage weren't part of the particular case, so other rulings about injury and such might apply, but Very Specifically, if wrongfully arrested there was no point prior to you being released where you were not fully within your rights to take any and every not otherwise forbidden action to escape. Further, not having actually been Arrested (because that requires that the action of arresting you be in compliance with the law), you can't legitimately be charged with (and certainly can't be found guilty of) Resisting arrest.
Consult your own state's law and an actual lawyer before acting on that though, a lot of states absolutely have passed laws to the contrary (despite questionable compliance with state and/or federal constitutions in some instances and the blatantly unjust curtailment of liberty that results).
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New Zealand has a similar law: if you're within 20 (I think it is) metres of an intersection (regardless of how the intersection is controlled) or a marked pedestrian crossing, you are supposed to go the extra 20m and cross there. Also, you are supposed to cross at right angles to the road, not at a diagonal or in some weird arc or whatever.
So far as I'm aware though, the only Enforcement of this law (I base this in part on how the kids at my highschool crossed rush hour traffic right outside a police station pretty much every morning without even a friendly reminder that it wasn't the best idea for my whole time there and years before and after) is that in the event of an accident, if the pedestrian is breaking said law (or is it just a regulation?) the driver of the vehicle (and their insurance company) is only guilty of/liable for, at most, failure to avoid an accident, and usually not even that (assuming they don't just drive off rather than stopping to resolve things, which is its own crime). If the pedestrian was following the law correctly, the driver (and their insurance company) is looking at much bigger problems.
Mind you, it's supposed to be the pedestrian's responcability to not step out in front of cars when there isn't a big enough gap in the traffic to start with, but humans (on foot or in vehicles) do many dumb things on a regular basis.
The reason for that rule, at intersections is that if the pedestrian is closer to, but not at, the intersection, they often can't see a car coming from the side roads, and the driver can't see the pedestrian until after they've turned, at which point there's generally not time for them to notice, then react, and then for the car to actually Stop before the pedestrian's already been hit.
It got extended to pedestrian crossings probably mostly to keep the rules consistent combined with encouraging one not being a inconsiderate arse. (Cars already have to stop for pedestrians that are on the crossing (though pedestrians aren't supposed to start crossing unless there is either a gap like usual or the cars are already stopped for a preceding pedestrian. Of course, these days the crossings frequently have traffic lights like the intersections rather than just road markings and warning signs.)
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