 The Police Department for the City of Santa Rosa, California is pleased to cooperate with the Department of Developmental Services of the State of California in producing this video. Entirely too many persons with developmental disabilities have been killed or seriously injured by motor vehicles while walking and crosswalks. Hopefully this training tape will help to reduce the appalling increase in pedestrian injuries and deaths in this segment of our population. If the instructions given by officers in this film are followed, we look forward to a substantial reduction in pedestrian accidents involving persons with developmental disabilities. Okay one thing you guys want to remember when you're crossing the street in a crosswalk, is that crosswalk there it's not a safety zone and what I mean by that girls is that when you enter that crosswalk that's just like a controlled area for people to cross the street but not all the cars are going to stop for you so it's real important even though you're in a crosswalk you still have to look for cars and make sure that they're slowing and stopping for you okay because those little yellow lines aren't going to protect you from a car hitting you okay so you gotta remember that it's not a safety zone. When you guys also are in the crosswalk you want to make sure of a couple of things when you're crossing a roadway that has more than one or two lanes okay sometimes when cars are coming and say you have two lanes side by side you want to make sure that you cross one lane at a time and you want to make sure that the car stops because what happens a lot of times is one car will stop and then after that car stops the ones in the lanes next to it don't see you or they think that person's turning or something and they drive by and a lot of times people get hit by cars that don't stop next to other cars so whenever you're crossing the street and there's a lot of lanes in each direction you want to go lane by lane and you want to make sure that each car stops independently or by themselves so if one car stops you cross that lane and then you look at the next lane and make sure that the car in that lane stops and they don't just drive past okay so you guys want to remember that because that's very important okay another feature that we want to go over or talk about when you guys are crossing the crosswalk when you come up to the crosswalk and you're standing there before you enter the street and a car comes up and stops for you guys it's very important that you look at that driver and make sure that they're not just slowing down the turn or that they see you so what i want you to do is when you come up to a crosswalk and you're on the sidewalk and you stop you want to look at that driver that stopped in the car and look at him and make sure you guys have eye contact it's real important that your eyes focus on their eyes okay and you look right at them and every now and then people will wave you wave you by or they'll give you a nod and that just lets you guys know that they saw you and it's safe to pass them off they'll wave their hands exactly or they'll just kind of nod and look at you and smile and that way you know that you can cross the street safely until you do that you don't step out into the street okay okay the safest way to cross the street is when you are in a crosswalk you don't want to run right okay you walk across the crosswalk you look lane by lane you look at all the cars because sometimes what happens if you're standing on the sidewalk and you're walking up to the crosswalk and then you just decide to run across the street a person in the car can't react that fast so you want to stop on the sidewalk and hesitate for a little bit and then walk across you don't just want to be running or walking down the sidewalk then run out into the crosswalk because that person in that car if they're close to the crosswalk there they can't stop fast enough okay so we want to always walk through the crosswalk never run okay good another kind of hazard at crosswalks that you guys want to be aware of is when you're standing on the corner and you're going to cross the crosswalk and a car comes up on the street that's right by the crosswalk and they want to make a right-handed turn a lot of times what happens if the light is red and the person wants to make a right-handed turn they're looking at traffic to their left okay they're not looking at you standing on the corner to the right side of their vehicle and what they do is they look to the traffic to their left and they make that right turn and they don't see you stepping off the corner a lot of times people get hit so what you want to do is if you have a red light and it says walk and you start to walk and that car is facing a red light you want to make sure that they see you and then we go back to eye contact you make eye contact with that person in the car and that way they can tell you to cross the street safely okay if they're looking to their left and all you see is the back of their head then you don't want to start across the street till you see their face and make eye contact okay okay good whenever you're at an intersection see this intersection out here julia martha it doesn't have traffic lights or signals now when you cross the street at an intersection that has traffic lights or signals there's the walk don't walk signs you know those it's either it either says walk in green or it says don't walk in red right the other type of sign they have is they have a picture of a person walking right and they're in green or have you seen what's the other one do you remember what the other one is right don't what's the other sign that says don't walk but what's the other one where the person walks it's a red hand right just like this and that means don't go okay so whenever you're at intersection and they have those signs you want to make sure that you obey them because the reason for that is is when it's green and it says walk that means that there's a green light for cars the same direction you're walking when it's red that means that cars are going across the crosswalk and you walk right out in front of them and they have a green light so you want to make sure that you obey the walk and don't walk signs and remember they're either says walk or don't walk or there's a picture of a hand or a person walking okay okay when you're crossing the street after you stopped at the corner and you've made sure it's clear and you want to walk across the street then you need to walk within the crosswalk okay you don't want to walk out of the crosswalk you don't want to start cutting the corner there you want to make sure that you walk within the crosswalk okay so whenever you cross the street and you have the light that says go ahead and walk or there's no cars coming you want to stay within the crosswalk okay if I was walking across the street at night what color clothing do you guys think I should wear what would be smart would I want to wear black clothes at night no I wouldn't want to wear black clothes huh I'd want to wear something bright so if you're walking at night and you're crossing the street or you're just walking along the street you want to wear clothes that are bright or have a better idea is to have a flashlight with you yeah and wear and carry that flashlight with the flashlight on that way you have a light and people can see you're walking down the street and in the daytime it's also good to wear bright clothes like on a day like today where it's foggy out kind of dark you don't want to wear gray clothes around right because then you kind of blend in with the sky and the street so you always want to wear bright clothes that's a good idea to wear bright clothes when you're walking yeah okay and especially at night bright clothes and a flashlight okay okay another thing when you're in the crosswalk girls that you want to be be aware of is that you don't want to insist on the right way what I mean by that is if you're in the crosswalk and it says walk see there's a sign like we talked about earlier and it says walk you know and a car's coming and you don't think that car's going to stop you don't want to walk out in front of that car because it says walk okay because if you get hit by a car no matter how right you are you're not going to you're not going to win the car's going to hurt you very badly okay so you want to make sure that if a car's coming he's not going to stop even though you're in that crosswalk first you get back out of the way and don't insist that you're in the right we have assisted in making this video because in the city of Santa Rosa during the last several years we've had a substantial increase number of injuries and deaths by developmentally disabled people who are following the rules and were in the crosswalk but nonetheless were injured or killed Santa Rosa is not unlike any other city in this country where the increase in traffic and the anxiety on the part of drivers is encouraging them to occasionally violate the rules and make it unsafe for those in crosswalks if you follow the guidelines and directions video we hope that it will reduce the opportunity for these events to occur and assist you in avoiding this kind of thing in the future