SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — The San Diego Police Department’s Parking Enforcement team gave out 4,200 tickets for vehicles not in compliance with California’s new daylighting law since it first went into effect on Jan. 1.
The law makes it illegal for drivers to park their cars within 20 feet of a crosswalk, on the side of the street that faces the crosswalk.
“It’s all about pedestrian safety,” Erin Longen, SDPD’s Parking Enforcement Supervisor, said. “So as you approach a crosswalk, just think of any little kid walking to school, you’re not going to be able to see them when a car is parked close to the crosswalk.”
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SDPD’s Parking Enforcement team spent the first two months educating the public and giving out warnings.
“We handed out 1,500 warnings for two months, it was a little blue slip we would leave on cars we saw in violation,” Longen said. This helped get the word out ahead of the ticketing and enforcement, which began on March 1.
“We’ve written over 4,200 tickets, which sounds like a high number, but it’s less than 10% of the tickets were writing as an agency, and we are writing them both proactively and reactively, so people do use the Get It Done App to report violations in their neighborhood, so we respond to those as well as just in the community seeing what we see,” Longen said.
She said the most issues the parking enforcement team sees are in the areas where parking is already hard to come by.
Specifically, Normal Heights, North Park, Hillcrest, University Heights, Ocean Beach, Pacific Beach and La Jolla.
The law applies to any crosswalk, even if it’s not a marked crosswalk with the white lines on the street, and even if the curb is not painted red, or if the curb is not painted red the full 20 feet length.
“Just remember that some red zones were painted prior to this law, so some of them might only be 5 feet, but we have to give that 20 foot clearance,” she said.
A ticket for violating the new law costs $117, which is mandated by the state.
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