Flags the Kailua Village Business Improvement District placed at its crosswalks…. half a world away on an island and people still have trouble crossing.

For years, I’ve been reading about pedestrians who have taken matters into their own hands to safely get across roads on crosswalks. Seattle, Chicago, Washington DC, Brooklyn…. people sick and tired of having to fear for their lives to walk across a crosswalk have placed orange flags in barrels on either side of the intersection that people can use while they are crossing.

And now, the Village of Pittsford has armed pedestrians with their own orange flags to safely cross Monroe. As the D&C reports: “…a quiet war between walker and driver rages in this privileged parcel of suburbia and the battle lines are the white-striped crosswalks of its main thoroughfare, Monroe Avenue.”

Now, I have always coveted those little pedestrian yield signs that the Village of Pittsford has and assumed everything was quiet and idyllic there, where people are polite and stop to let people cross while they sip their lattes and fed the ducks. And I’m also jealous that they actually get white-striped crosswalks, not the ambiguous parallel white lines we have in most parts of the city that don’t really look like crosswalks.

But it looks like even the Village is not immune to the battle between cars and pedestrians. According to the D&C, in the last 5 years, there have been 184 crashes on Monroe Ave in the Village — 42 at Sutherland Street; 33 between Main Street and the Village boundary.

Mayor Robert Corby said it cost about $300 to buy the flags and it is a small price to pay to help raise awareness that people use the crosswalks to walk across streets.

I’m ready to carry a flag. I shouldn’t have to, but that might be what it takes. The laws say nothing about pedestrians carrying flags, but they do say a lot about the responsibility of drivers to be aware of pedestrians.