Montgomery, AL Public Conduct: Jaywalking (2026)

Chapter 27's pedestrian article, tracing back to the city's 1972 traffic code, splits jaywalking enforcement by location. Sec. 27-344 flatly bars crossing a roadway anywhere except in a crosswalk within a business district, the strictest and most literal 'jaywalking' rule in the code. Outside a business district, Sec. 27-343 allows crossing mid-block but shifts the right-of-way burden onto the pedestrian: anyone crossing outside a marked crosswalk, or outside an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection, must yield to all vehicles already on the roadway, and the same yield duty applies where the city has posted 'Pedestrian Yield to Vehicle' signs at a crosswalk or provided a pedestrian tunnel or overhead crossing.

Sec. 27-342 adds that any crossing outside a crosswalk must be by the shortest, right-angle route to the opposite curb, not a diagonal path. Sec. 27-341 rounds out the etiquette rules by requiring pedestrians, whenever practicable, to use the right half of a crosswalk, mirroring the rule of the road for vehicles. These sections apply throughout Montgomery's corporate limits and were carried over from the 1980 Code with the pedestrian article's numbering unchanged since the 1972 ordinance, alongside the state's own pedestrian statute at Code of Ala. Sec. 32-5A-210 et seq.