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Letter to the Editor: Peter Borowski

The students of Bradley have recently been called blind frogs who never look up from their phones in a PJ Star article. I wanted to provide a student prospective of the jay walking issue. I believe that student jaywalking is a non issue at Bradley. The students do so in order to arrive at class in a timely fashion, safely, and for the betterment of local traffic flow.

It is often necessary to jaywalk because the fifteen minutes between classes may not be ample time to wait for a signal. Crossing at a crosswalk does not maintain our safety anymore than jaywalking. There are a few ‘yield to pedestrian signs’ that can be activated by someone trying to cross. At these crosswalks, however, the traffic does not slow down and the students are therefore doing the same thing as when they jaywalk. They put there phones down, look both ways, wait for a break in traffic, and cross the street.

Lastly, student jaywalking is better for the traffic patterns if done correctly. We wait to go in between natural traffic breaks inside of stopping traffic as a whole causing severe backups on already busy roads.

I propose the addition of more ‘yield’ type crosswalks (particularly one between St. James and the SAC) to protect the students right to cross at more convenient points so that we don’t have to worry about a fine as we worry to get to class and stay out of the elements. If that isn’t suitable a fine senior project for the civil engineers would be to design a pedestrian bridge. Most easily, we can petition the city to lift the sequence “J” designation from University Street.

 

Peter Borowski

pborowski@mail.bradley.edu

Senior mechanical engineering major

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