At a residential intersection with no painted crosswalks and no signals, a person steps off the curb to cross the street where the two sidewalks would meet if extended. What does the law say about this crossing?

Why A is correct

Every intersection where two sidewalks meet contains a legal crossing whether or not anyone has painted it: the extension of the sidewalk lines across the road is the crosswalk. Pedestrians in that crossing hold the same priority as they would under fresh white bars, and drivers must yield. The everyday habit of treating unmarked corners as free-for-alls is exactly the assumption this rule corrects, because in residential streets the marked crosswalk is the exception rather than the rule, and pedestrians still have somewhere legal to be.

Why the other options are wrong

B. Pedestrians have priority only where a crosswalk is painted

Paint announces a crossing; it does not create the only one. If marked crossings were the sole legal crossings, nearly every residential corner in the state would be an illegal place to cross, which is plainly not the law's design.

C. You must yield only if the pedestrian is older than 65

Age has nothing to do with the right of way. A twenty-year-old crossing at an unmarked corner holds the same priority as anyone else, and the driver's duty does not depend on who happens to be stepping off the curb.

D. The pedestrian is jaywalking and must yield to you

The jaywalking label gets applied loosely, but crossing at an intersection along the sidewalk extension is not jaywalking. The pedestrian is in a legal crossing, and the yield duty sits with the driver regardless of paint.

On the road

Two women reach the corner of a quiet street in Platt Park and cross where the sidewalks meet, no bars painted anywhere. You are rolling up to the intersection at 20 mph. You ease off well before the corner and let them cross in their own time, because the extension of the sidewalk lines is a crosswalk to the law even though it is invisible to your eye.

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