Pedestrians face €4 jaywalking fine

Paris police hope penalty will help cut the number of accidents and deaths on the capital's roads

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.