Knox County, TN Public Conduct: Jaywalking (2026)

Section 62-298 governs pedestrian crossings outside crosswalks. Subsection (a) requires any pedestrian crossing a roadway at a point other than within a marked crosswalk, or an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection, to yield the right-of-way to every vehicle on that roadway; the duty to yield falls entirely on the pedestrian in that situation. Subsection (b) extends the same yield obligation to a pedestrian crossing where the county has provided a pedestrian tunnel or overhead crossing instead of a street-level crossing. Subsection (c) tightens the rule further between adjacent intersections controlled by traffic signals: in that stretch, pedestrians may not cross at any point except within a marked crosswalk, closing off the unmarked-crosswalk option that exists elsewhere in the code.

Subsection (d) requires pedestrians to comply strictly with any official traffic control signal governing their crossing. The section works alongside Sec. 62-297, which gives pedestrians in a marked or unmarked intersection crosswalk the right-of-way over vehicles when no signal is controlling the crossing, so the crosswalk itself is what shifts the legal duty from the pedestrian to the driver. General obedience to traffic devices is separately required of pedestrians under Sec. 62-296, and county sheriff's deputies enforce all of Article VII's pedestrian rules under the general traffic-enforcement authority in Sec. 62-83.