Four times a week, Esteban Rodriguez skates to school from his apartment in Manoa. Four times a week he almost gets run over for walking across the crosswalk on University and seeing cars race dangerously by him, and not come to a complete stop while a pedestrian is crossing the street.

“Its ridiculous that every day a student crosses the street they have a high chance on being killed or highly injured,” said Rodriguez, a senior at Chaminade University. “Seems like people are always in a rush here in Hawaii because having to wait for a pedestrian is not going through their mind,” He likes that there are no lights at every crosswalk, but the fact that drivers don’t like to stop or respect the pedestrians makes it hard to want to cross the road.

According the the Hawaii pedestrian law, “driver of a vehicle shall stop and yield the right of way, to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within a crosswalk when the pedestrian is upon the half of the roadway upon which the vehicle is traveling, or when the pedestrian is approaching so closely from the opposite half of the roadway as to be in danger.”

Aven Santiago, a sophomore student at Chaminade, thinks this new law is not right. The law says that the driver has the option to yield or stop.

“It does not help the safety of the pedestrian whatsoever.” “I could be crossing the street and a driver could have the option to speed by me or stop, this makes me feel like a yellow light,” said Santiago.

Honolulu has an average of 58 hours stuck in traffic last year, according to a study by Inrix Inc. one of the heaviest traffic ratings across the United States year in and year out. To have crosswalks with no safety lights is hard to imagine, but it has been fact for many years now. Terrance Aikens, a junior at Chaminade was hit twice this year by crossing the street legally. Both times being hit at the crosswalk on Waialae St, near Longs Drugs.

“It makes me enraged to remember that during my spring break I had to be escorted on a wheelchair because someone decided not to stop and just yield through a crosswalk late at night.”

“ If the driver didn’t have two options and only had one which is to stop and not yield, the outcome could have probably played out different,” Aikens said.

These crosswalks with no safety lights are meant for impatient people with no time to stop. What people always seem to forget is that a motor vehicle can take your life away in less than a second. As quickly as you think you are, you will never be quicker than a car and you sure as heck wont be able to dodge one every day of the week. With cops busy with other problems around the city, they don’t always have the time and opportunity to be playing traffic police. The police would be the only catalyst to this problem. They are the only ones allowed to give tickets to a driver speeding through a crosswalk while a pedestrian is walking. With traffic being busy seven days a week, the police must make an act to stop drivers and make the pedestrian first on their watch.