A new amendment to the Illinois Vehicle Code, HB 43, clarifies driver responsibility and makes police enforcement of the law easier.  Prior to enactment, the vehicle code provides that the driver of a vehicle “shall yield the right-of-way, slowing down or stopping if need be to so yield,” to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within a crosswalk when no traffic control signals are present.  The ‘yield’ requirement – as well as the new ‘stop’ requirement – applied when the pedestrian was in the motorist’s half of the roadway, or was approaching from the opposite half of the roadway and was in imminent danger.  HB 43, when enacted, will provide that the driver of a vehicle “shall stop and yield the right-of-way” in such circumstances.

The Illinois Vehicle Code will continue to require that pedestrians not leave the curb or other place of refuge and move into the path of a moving vehicle, so as to constitute an immediate hazard.