The $1 fine for jaywalking is high enough already

Pedestrian deaths have risen in the past two years. Whatever the cause, there are better ways to make streets safer than increased penalties for jaywalking.

A pedestrian passes City Hall on Congress Street, Dec. 30, 2021.Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff

On Thursday night in Hyde Park, a woman was struck and killed by a vehicle — adding one more fatality to a death toll that has increased markedly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Few would have predicted a link between an airborne virus and roadway deaths, but that’s exactly what has unfolded: About 6,700 pedestrians nationwide died in car crashes in 2020, up about 5 percent from the year before, and fatalities in 2021 appear to have risen too.

Here in Massachusetts, 79 pedestrians died in crashes in 2021, the first full year of the pandemic, up from 57 in 2020, according to state data.

There’s no shortage of potential explanations for the surge, including the popularity of large SUVs, more opportunities to speed during the initial lockdowns, frayed nerves from the pandemic, and a general breakdown in societal norms. (The Hyde Park crash remains under investigation.) But whatever the causes, the solutions to the problem must be in designing safer vehicles and safer road infrastructure for all users, and not relying on punitive strategies.

An example of the exact wrong approach is a new push in the Legislature to increase penalties for jaywalking. Currently, fines in Massachusetts for illegal street crossing start at $1. Lawmakers have periodically floated the idea of increasing the fines. The idea has always failed, and for good reason: Jaywalking laws are essentially unenforceable, and often run counter to common sense. Expecting pedestrians to troop to a street crossing that may be a hike away instead of crossing an empty road isn’t reasonable, and we should look askance at laws that most of us, if we’re being honest, know we’ll break. There is also evidence of racial disparities in jurisdictions that have attempted to actually enforce their jaywalking laws.

While there’s more justification for cracking down on motorists who drive too fast, text and drive, or run red lights — and enforcement will always have its place — the reality is we can’t punish our way to safer streets.

One better approach, one reflected in former Boston mayor Marty Walsh’s “Vision Zero” initiative, is to focus on road design itself. Adding speed humps, removing parking spaces that block visibility, creating curb extensions that make it easier for drivers to spot pedestrians at intersections, removing unnecessary travel lanes, and building raised pedestrian crossings and islands are all improvements that can yield safer spaces for pedestrians. Other countries have even tried things like installing optical illusions to trick drivers into slowing down.

Of course, those kinds of upgrades can be a hard sell, as the uproar a few years ago over once-planned safety upgrades on Centre Street in West Roxbury showed. But studies show they work.

In the longer term, the federal government can help by moving quickly to mandate more safety features in cars, like automatic emergency brakes (which most new cars already have) and technology to detect if the driver is impaired; last year, Congress required new cars to include that feature, but it could be years before the rule comes into force.

Human error, whether on the part of drivers or pedestrians, is not going away, and people will continue to make reckless choices either on the road or crossing it. But the surge in road deaths that has accompanied the pandemic ought to be the wake-up call for cities and the federal government to implement the technologies and road designs that can protect us from ourselves.

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Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us on Twitter at @GlobeOpinion.