The latest example of this is the new crosswalk alert system on Lincoln Avenue. In mid-August the city put in small alert signs that sit up in the center of the street at some of the crosswalks on Lincoln.

Designed to make inattentive drivers aware that pedestrians have right of way in the crosswalks, the little metal reminders seem rather redundant to me. The problem is, after all, not with traffic that won't slow down and stop for pedestrians—it is with pedestrians that will not use the darned crosswalks to begin with and have made the street one long parking lot of pain and whiplash.

What is the point of adding yet another layer of signs that force us to focus on the least-used places in the street? Those well-defined brick crosswalks—with their metal "street-side entryways" and the nightly lights that look like someone forgot to put the Christmas ornaments away—are already obvious. Short of hiring a guy in a gorilla suit with a sandwich board to stand there and scream at oncoming traffic, I wonder if they really needed something new to draw drivers' attention.

They do, however, need something to draw pedestrians' attention to use them.

Our pedestrians jaywalk willy-nilly, skittering across the street like free-range gerbils. I have seen ant hills explode with more order than the way the foot traffic in our "shopping district" moves about. Red, yellow or green makes no difference to a lady with a hot cup of Starbucks coffee and a stroller full of learning toys. The problem, I posit, is not that the traffic won't stop for the pedestrians, it is that the pedestrians sometimes seem to actually want to die in traffic and will do anything necessary to achieve their suicidal goals.

Walkers seem to step out directly into rush hour traffic, haughty and sure of their "legal" rights, and then seem to deliberately avoid turning their heads to look at the screeching car just inches from their lumbering limbs. Chatting with friends, sprinting alone, or carrying coffee and bagels and pizza, they seem to take delight in giving oncoming traffic no notice whatsoever of their intent. Some linger on the sidewalk edge, wavering until the clear moment passes and the traffic pod reaches their section to fling themselves with wild abandonment directly into the path of whatever SUV just finished stopping for the crosswalk traffic and the illegal-turn traffic and has now begun to give the engine a good push to 25, only to have to pound on the brake at the last possible second.

Lincoln Avenue pedestrians seem to thrive on the smell of burning rubber.

If the city wanted to have people pay attention to the hordes of future walking wounded, they would put out crosswalks that mimic the British style—the striped, Day-Glo, double-wide walking strip with blinking lights and lowered gates. Similar to train crossings, such crosswalks would guarantee that the pedestrians being drawn, zombie-like, to get one more slushy fruit drink would get more than a moment's notice before being flattened like Victorian posies in a press.

Drivers do get more notice after lunch hour ends, when, bloated and slow, pedestrians travel in herds across the street, drifting through the lanes with the gentle abandonment of helium balloons giddy in the wind.

I want to know how many jaywalking tickets the police have written up and down the street over the last year.

I want to be in the bumper-to-bumper traffic stuck behind the endless left-turn drivers during rush hour and look out my window at the motorcycle cop winding in and out of the stalled traffic, pulling over the health-and-fitness crowd after they dart between us all. Let them take out their IDs and promise to appear in court or to pay the fine and sin no more. Let them learn to use those very expensive brick crosswalks, especially now that they are also tagged like graffiti.

Deborah can be reached at dthollis@svcn.com.