Our legislators in Sacramento have been busy “helping us” again; they have passed—and Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed—several new laws that will impact people on the Central Coast and everywhere else in the once golden state. Some may have an adverse impact on traffic safety, others your pocketbook.
Two important changes go into effect in January that could have a serious impact on traffic safety. It’s already challenging to navigate crowded roadways, but these new laws will only add to pedestrians’ and car or truck drivers’ worries while traveling.
Existing law currently “prohibits pedestrians from entering roadways and crosswalks, except under specified circumstances. Under existing law, a violation of these provisions is an infraction.”
Assembly Bill 2147 will now “prohibit a peace officer, as defined, from stopping a pedestrian for specified traffic infractions unless a reasonably careful person would realize there is an immediate danger of collision with a moving vehicle or other device moving exclusively by human power.” (openstates.org/ca/bills/20212022/AB2147)
We all know that we are required to yield to pedestrians at intersections even if there is no marked crosswalk. The current law, the one being changed, was enacted as a means of preventing injury accidents.
We don’t expect to have to watch out for jaywalkers in the middle of the block; now the jaywalkers appear to have the upper hand. Since police will no longer be able to keep folks from running out in traffic if they think they can beat passing cars, the number of injury/fatal accidents will increase.
In mid-December, a jaywalker was struck in a traffic lane on H Street (Highway 1) near Pine Street in Lompoc and seriously injured. Apparently, he/she thought it was OK to cross in traffic, but they guessed wrong.
Another is Assembly Bill 1909 the “bicycle omnibus bill”; this bill would additionally require a vehicle that is passing or overtaking a bicycle to “move over to an adjacent lane of traffic, as specified, if one is available, before passing or overtaking the bicycle.” Yet another thing to add to the list of things motor vehicle operators must contend with while trying to get from one place to another. (leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB1909)
Two other bills will impact the cost of your hamburgers and will do nothing to help service industry workers. Assembly Bill 257 is “to establish sector-wide minimum standards on wages, working hours, and other working conditions related to the health, safety, and welfare of, and supplying the necessary cost of proper living to, fast food restaurant workers, as well as effecting interagency coordination and prompt agency responses in this regard.”
In effect, government appointees will be imposing unionization of fast-food workers on corporations and individual franchise owners. You can be sure that the cost of your Happy Meal is going up.
Another is Senate Bill 3, which was passed in 2017; it provided for periodic increases in the minimum wage. Now all employers are required to pay $15.50 no matter how many people they employ. Expect to see new menus soon; there won’t be any new items, just price increases.
Will either of these two actions by our elected officials help the workers? Just consider how the past increases impacted the cost of your burger; the employees who will be earning a couple of dollars more will be spending them to buy things that cost more because of increased labor costs. Businesses will react by changing the way they deliver services, such as changing from having servers take your order to making their restaurants self-serve, or self-checkout instead of having a checker to help you.
Politicians just don’t understand how some of their “helpful” lawmaking can impact your pocketbook; take it from someone who earned less than a dollar an hour when he was young and only paid 15 cents for a burger; now it’s over $10 for an a la carte order (no fries and no drink).
Every time the minimum wage is increased, the cost of everything you use goes up and the folks who work at these jobs can never get ahead. Keep that in mind the next time you vote for these fools; their minds can’t comprehend how the world works or what adverse impact their “help” will have—and you will suffer the consequences of their actions.
Ron Fink writes to New Times from Lompoc. Send a letter for publication to letters@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Jan 5-15, 2023.
It’s funny how you took the word “omnibus,” which in your mind just means “a word associated with other legislation that right wing media has told me that I don’t like,” but actually means something entirely unrelated to how you’re trying to use it to describe a single, banal traffic code. Terrible work. Great job.
Sure, those pesky pedestrians have been waiting with baited breath for this law to change so they can play chicken with trucks and cars in the middle of the street. I’m so happy you’ve alerted us to this blatant mismanagement of our laws by the legislature. My signs are ready. When do we protest?
It is ironic that the party who purports to support the poor is making it harder and harder for them to eat, by causing fast food prices to rise through higher wages. Will they appreciate paying $5 for a Big Mac? The fashionably liberal politicians can eat at their quaint bistros while the low income bear the brunt of their pandering for votes.
Weird I thought the min wage increases under Obama were going to decimate the workforce?
I guess we have to stop increases on gas, electricity, insurance, etc because the “small businesses” just can’t stand to deal with increases in costs?
“Roughly half the minimum-wage workforce is employed at businesses with fewer than 100 employees, and 40% are at very small businesses with fewer than 50 employees.”
Roughly 1.5% of all Americans make the federal minimum wage
About one-third of the U.S. workforce earns less than $15 an hour, says Oxfam, and they are disproportionately women and workers of color.
Today’s WSJ
“Small Businesses Still Trying to Hire
The latest NFIB employment report finds a U.S. job market that is strong but no longer setting records.
Wow how is that possible? I mean in Cali we raised the min wage to $15 an hour, how will the large Corps who employ half the min wage workers be eable to afford it?
3.5% Unemployment rate, record Corp profits and stock buy backs, lowest effective tax rates on millionaires and billionaires (and Corps) in 70 years, must be horrible to punish the “job creators”
Thats right John, the poor and uncouth eat at McDonalds. The blacks prefer KFC and the Hispanics love Taco Bell.
Sheesh, tone deaf, much.
“If you want a living wage, get a better job” is a fascinating way to spin “I acknowledge that your current job needs to be done, but I think whomever does that job deserves to be in poverty.”
Gee, Mike, you’re reading a lot into my comment which isn’t there. Sheesh, projecting much?