A Cumberland County man says Mechanicsburg’s mayor duped him at a pedestrian crosswalk. On Thursday Joe Erdos got pulled over and ticketed for failing to stop at a pedestrian crosswalk on Main Street in Mechanicsburg. “After I got the ticket I was a little bit ticked off about it” said Erdos.
That’s because Erdos said he stopped, but the pedestrian never crossed the street so he kept driving. A short while later he saw the same pedestrian at the same crosswalk, so he walked up and confronted him while filming it on his cellphone. In the cellphone video Erdos said “you acted like you were going to cross the street and then you stopped when I tried to let you go and then they pulled me over.” Erdos goes on to say “this is a heck of a scam you got going.”
It turns out the person he confronted was Mechanicsburg Mayor Jack Ritter who remembers the incident differently. “He did not yield at a crosswalk and was pulled over and not happy about that. And I don’t blame him, he’s just not happy about that” said Ritter. Erdos said he feels slighted. “It’s a disingenuous way to give people tickets. And that ticket’s not cheap, it was a hundred and fifty dollars” said Erdos.
Ritter said he volunteers as part of a program sponsored by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation to reduce pedestrian accidents. As for Erdos, he’s no longer upset. “I don’t want to turn this into a personal attack on the guy. He was probably surprised that I was coming up to him” said Erdos.
Mechanicsburg’s Chief of Police said that when they started the program 3 years ago there were roughly 12 pedestrian accidents as opposed to about 4 last year.