Pedestrians face €4 jaywalking fine

PEDESTRIANS in Paris who fail to take care when crossing the road could be hit with a €4 fine under heightened measures designed to improve road safety in the capital.

Paris police have introduced the nominal fine for jaywalkers caught ignoring traffic lights or trying to get across a street where there is no pedestrian crossing.

According to police data, 29 pedestrians were killed crossing Paris roads last year.

The city's head of road safety Françoise Hardy said: "We are using all the means available to us to reduce the number of accidents."

One policeman, speaking anonymously to Le Parisien, suspected the fines were a PR move designed to artificially inflate the number of penalty notices issued in a year.

"You just have to stand at any crossroads in Paris and you could dish out 50 fines in 10 minutes," he told the newspaper.