The "Right of Way"

If you haven't seen the movie "The Station Agent," you should.  It's a terrific movie.  It's about, among other things, a guy who loves trains.  He's an expert on them, and on the rail industry and its history.  At one point, he explains to another character about his habit of "walking the right of way."  The train track, and the land under it, are called the "right of way," because in the 19th Century, the US government seized land, and gave it to the railroad companies, so they could build tracks on it.  It's a strange and dissonant use of the term "right of way."  It was land taken (no doubt by eminent domain, and with compensation to the owners) by the government, and given to someone else, for what amounts to their private use.  "Right of way" sounds friendly.  Taking someone's land, and giving it instead to someone else, isn't friendly at all.  Although presumably, the government thought it would be in the common interest to enable the rail industry.

Here in BP, we have two concepts that are subsumed under the term "right of way."  One is about land.  The medians and the swales are designated as rights of way.  So are the alleys behind some of the houses here.  And there were other tracts, essentially walking paths, that were also rights of way, until they got absorbed into property owners' landscape schemes, and you couldn't find them any more.  But the other rights of way, including the swales in front of all of our houses, do not, in fact, belong to us.  They belong to the Village.  They can be used for whatever the Village wants to use them for.  They can have utility installations on or under them.  The use of them is not our call.  But we have to maintain them as we maintain what is our property.  We can landscape them, with restrictions, and we have to cut what grass we put there, trim what shrubs we plant there, and assume all the maintenance responsibilities, even though we property owners don't own them and cannot determine their use.  So again, there's something unfriendly about the real concept of those rights of way.  They are intended for the public good.

The other concept that is called right of way has nothing to do with land, per se.  It has to do with primacy.  If you're driving along a road, and a driver wants to pull out onto the road where you're driving, you have the right of way.  If two people stop at four way stop signs at the same time, the one to the right has the right of way.  If four people stop there at the same time, the one coming from the north has the right of way, and can go first.

Many jurisdictions, including the municipalities in south Florida, grant the right of way to pedestrians over cars.  So if you're walking in the street, let's say crossing it, and a car comes along, the car has to stop for you, even if you're jaywalking.  Because you're a pedestrian, and you have the right of way.  That's a combination of safety and courtesy.  And the assumption, of course, is that you will expeditiously finish crossing the street, so the car can proceed.  That's the courtesy you, as a pedestrian, owe drivers.  You should also, of course, not arrogantly jaywalk, just because you have the right of way if you do.

Jaywalking is not legal, although the superseding statute says the driver has to give pedestrians the right of way.  And there are other rules that are intended to control the use of the streets, for the purposes of safety and courtesy.  For example, pedestrians are required by law to walk "against traffic," so that they will see cars coming toward them from in front of them.  If you know this is the law, and you think it's painfully self-evident, you can explain that to all the pedestrians who walk on the right, with the flow of traffic, so cars come up on them from behind them, where the pedestrians can't see them coming.

Likewise, it's painfully self-evident that if you're in the street (in BP, if you're walking anywhere except around the recreation center, you have to be walking in the street, since we don't have sidewalks anywhere else), and a car is coming, you should get out of the way.  The choice you always have is to step onto the swale wherever you are.  The choice you sometimes have is to step onto a median.  But get out of the way.

Streets are built only for one purpose: non-pedestrian traffic.  They're there for cars.  No one builds streets for pedestrians.  If you're on the street, and a car is on the same street, you should yield.  You have choices where to walk.  Drivers don't have choices where to drive.  So just move out of the way.  Step to the side, take your dog or your stroller with you, and let the car pass.  They're moving faster than you are, and you'll have the street back very soon.  Is there something you're trying to prove?

The law protects pedestrians, so drivers have to go to trouble not to hit them.  But drivers have a right of way, too.