Honolulu drivers might be asked to use hazard lights at crosswalks

A bill that suggests drivers put on their flashing hazard warning lights after stopping for a pedestrian on a street with multiple lanes won tentative approval Thursday from a Honolulu City Council committee.

The hope is other drivers will see the flashing lights and stop.

“The use of hazard warning lights can prevent pedestrian accidents in situations where a driver stops for a pedestrian intending to cross multiple lanes and turns on their warning lights in order to notify other motorists traveling in other lanes that the pedestrian is crossing,” said Councilman Ron Menor, the bill’s author.

Last year 28 pedestrians were killed on Oahu roads.

The proposal would be an inexpensive means of improving pedestrian safety at crosswalks compared with different types of warning lights or signs and other traffic calming measures. “They’re expensive,” Menor said. “We have a proposal that’s not going to cost the city anything.”

Honolulu Police Department Traffic Division acting Maj. Ben Moskowitz called the proposal innovative. “We’re open to all kinds of crazy, wild ideas. … The best ideas are stuff we haven’t even considered.”

The original draft of Bill 83 (2018) would have required motorists to put on their hazard warning lights in this situation. Menor proposed changing the language to say motorists “may utilize their vehicle’s hazard warning lights to alert other drivers on the road.”

The bill, with the new language, won initial approval Thursday from the Public Safety, Welfare and Transportation Committee.

Menor said the bill is in response to the growing number of Oahu pedestrian accidents and fatalities.

His office has received calls of support from constituents who heard about the bill through news coverage.

Police said they want to research the issue further before embracing it.

One concern is that a motorist approaching another vehicle in the same lane with flashing hazard lights might conclude that it means the car is stalled and react by moving through another lane without considering there may be a pedestrian heading onto the street, Moskowitz said.

“Without some sort of massive public information push, or massive outreach to inform everyone of this, my concern would be that a motorist approaching from the back would see the hazard lights of the vehicle in front and assume … the vehicle is disabled, there might be an accident directly in front of them, maybe (the vehicle with the flashing lights was) in an accident with another vehicle,” Moskowitz said.

That could cause the motorist approaching the situation to switch lanes and possibly “rubberneck over to the driver of the car with the hazards on and maybe pay less attention to the crosswalk,” he said.

Committee Chairman Brandon Elefante agreed. “Usually, in most cases, and I’m not some sort of expert in this, people would go around if they see emergency hazards,” Elefante said. “But in this case it would be that someone is crossing at a legal crosswalk.”

Department of Transportation Services Director Wes Frysztacki read a portion of the national Uniform Vehicle Code that states hazard lights “may be equipped with lamps for the purpose of warning the operators of other vehicles of the presence of a vehicular traffic hazard requiring the exercise of unusual care in approaching, overtaking or passing.”

DTS Chief Traffic Engineer Mark Kikuchi said he believes “most drivers would assume that when the hazard lights are on, that car is disabled, and they’ll just try to overtake and probably, maybe not pay attention to a pedestrian.”

That said, Kikuchi said, the Uniform Vehicle Code does not contain language precluding an ordinance suggesting or requiring hazard lights be used in the manner the bill proposes.

Menor agreed that public education would be needed. “Right now hazard warning lights are used in particular situations, but the thing about the hazard lights is it is a warning, it’s visible,” he said. “If the word gets out that the law has changed, that ‘Hey, if you see hazard lights at the crosswalk, there could be somebody crossing at that point’ … it clearly would be a help.”

Currently there’s no warning for motorists shielded from seeing a pedestrian to be alerted, he said. “They just drive right through. That happens. … Especially on this island, we’ve got heavy traffic, a lot of areas with multiple lanes; we still have crosswalks without traffic lights where people are crossing. I see that on King Street, other locations. It’s a real hazard.”

Menor said the idea for the bill came from a Mililani resident concerned about pedestrian safety.

Honolulu is known for its innovative and cutting-edge traffic laws, he said, noting that the municipality became one of the first in the nation to pass a law prohibiting pedestrians from looking down at cellphones while crossing the street. That bill was introduced by Elefante.