I don't know why it would be illegal as long as the state or municipality has authorized the crossing guard to do it. If there were a law it would most likely be a municipal ordinance.
Sometimes traffic patterns (or your priorities about traffic patterns) are different from what they usually are. It's a lot easier to put out a crossing guard in those cases than to keep using the light: the crossing guard is right there, on the ground, and can therefore adjust to what's actually going on at the intersection.
I used to work in DC and every day there were crossing guards at this busy intersection in the business district during rush hour, managing traffic and pedestrians. No schools or children anywhere around, so it's clear that the city intentionally put the crossing guards there to help adults cross the street. An authorized crossing guard could stop cars at a green light because that's the exact reason they were there: to override the traffic light system in light of actual traffic patterns at that moment in time. Disobeying the traffic guard was a moving violation (or jaywalking, if you were a pedestrian), regardless of what the light said. Those guards were not to be messed with. And I'm pretty sure it was the best system they could have had to manage that kind of volume of traffic/pedestrians.
If I were you I'd be annoyed at how the guard darted out, which is dangerous, but not at the guard's existence.
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Date: 2009-01-17 10:02 pm (UTC)Sometimes traffic patterns (or your priorities about traffic patterns) are different from what they usually are. It's a lot easier to put out a crossing guard in those cases than to keep using the light: the crossing guard is right there, on the ground, and can therefore adjust to what's actually going on at the intersection.
I used to work in DC and every day there were crossing guards at this busy intersection in the business district during rush hour, managing traffic and pedestrians. No schools or children anywhere around, so it's clear that the city intentionally put the crossing guards there to help adults cross the street. An authorized crossing guard could stop cars at a green light because that's the exact reason they were there: to override the traffic light system in light of actual traffic patterns at that moment in time. Disobeying the traffic guard was a moving violation (or jaywalking, if you were a pedestrian), regardless of what the light said. Those guards were not to be messed with. And I'm pretty sure it was the best system they could have had to manage that kind of volume of traffic/pedestrians.
If I were you I'd be annoyed at how the guard darted out, which is dangerous, but not at the guard's existence.