Utah crosswalks might be more complicated than you think.
Let’s start with what everyone seems to agree on under Utah law: if a crosswalk is drawn with two long parallel lines, you can proceed as long as pedestrians are safely on the other half of the road.
But be warned.
School crosswalk rules are tighter. You or someone you know may have gotten a ticket or a warning. Local authorities have certainly been posting about it on social media now that school is back in session.
With a school crosswalk, drivers must wait until pedestrians are completely out of the crosswalk before proceeding.
This is a surprise to many Utah drivers, based on comments on Clearfield’s, Herriman’s and Saratoga Springs’ posts. Some folks shake their heads at drivers who aren’t aware. Others are mystified about how they’re supposed to know.
The law tells us how to act at school crosswalks, but it doesn’t say how to identify a school crosswalk. So KUER went down the rabbit hole.
If you look at definitions in the Utah Traffic Code, crosswalk shows up, but an explanation for a school crosswalk is nowhere to be found. It’s also absent from the Utah Driver Handbook. It comes up in the Utah Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, which governs street markings in the state and differs from the national version, but isn’t exactly defined.
Herriman spokesperson Jonathan La Follette appears in his city’s crosswalk 101 video. He told KUER two components make something a school crosswalk: the thick so-called zebra stripes painted on the road and a yellow-green pentagonal sign that shows two people crossing.
“If it has the combination of a zebra striping and the school crossing sign, we'll treat that as a school crosswalk, which has its own set of laws, and everything else we'll treat as a standard crosswalk,” he said.
But that can get muddied in the messaging. La Follette said crossing guards will sometimes tell people to follow the stricter rules whenever they see a zebra crosswalk, regardless of signage, because that’s easier to see and remember.
Police departments like Saratoga Springs and Clearfield have posted about stricter rules for zebra crosswalks without mentioning the school crossing sign.
That’s because there’s so much overlap, according to Clearfield Assistant Chief of Police Devin Rogers.
“Those are put in generally in school zones, so that ‘two persons crossing’ sign should accompany at least within that general area,” he said.
But zebra-striped crosswalks are sometimes far from schools. They cross 25th Street and Washington Boulevard in Ogden, for instance. Some have non-school pedestrian crossing signs. Others don’t have any signs at all.
What is a confused driver to do?
Captain Matt Ward of the Ogden Police Department said striped paint alone does not make something a school crosswalk. No school crossing sign? Regular rules apply.
The Utah Department of Transportation agrees. Andrea Guevara, traffic studies engineer, said school crosswalks are on designated safe routes and are marked by wide, white lines and a school crossing sign.
It’s unclear why striped crosswalks show up away from schools. Guevara said they could be holdovers from former school zones or mistakes, since Utah’s traffic control manual says, “Longitudinal crosswalk markings shall be reserved for school crosswalks.”
Not everyone is reading the nearly 1,000-page manual before breaking out the paint.
“Sometimes, especially for small projects, there are engineers that design something that don't have a lot of experience with roadway design,” Guevara said. “And so they put something in that they're like, ‘Oh yeah, this is a crosswalk,’ and it's not the right thing.”
She thinks departments are doing the best they can, but there aren’t engineering police to go around and check. And she knows how complicated traffic laws are.
“It seems, unless there's some kind of ongoing driver education, impossible for everyone to know the rules,” she said. “I think sometimes even police officers don't know all the rules.”
There’s a third type of crosswalk that doesn’t make the rounds on social media. The high-visibility crosswalk looks like a combination of the other two: ladder stripes, plus long lines going down each side. They’re designed to make a crosswalk more visible to drivers but have the same rules as standard crosswalks, Guevara said.
It’s a lot to keep track of.
“There probably needs to be better communication between the legislative body that makes the rules and those enforcing them, and the rest of us,” she said.
Macy Lipkin is a Report for America corps member who reports for KUER in northern Utah.
