Today I was on the 10 going down Gottigen St when a lady with a baby stroller wanted to cross the road. The bus driver slowed and stopped at the painted, clearly marked crosswalk. The lady started to cross and almost reached the left side of the front of the bus when OUT OF NOWHERE a black truck FLIES past the bus, almost hitting the lady and the stroller.
Didn’t see the crosswalk buddy? Too busy beating off to how fast your big black truck is to notice the bus was NOT at a bus stop, but stopping for a pedestrian?
Thank GOD the bus driver checked his mirror a split second before the truck almost sheared off the front of the stroller and honked to warn the lady.
Thank GOD it took her a split second to look at the bus driver wondering why.
No one wants to think what might have happened if he hadn’t.
I understand when motorists get impatient waiting behind buses- hey, I’ve even passed a bus or two- but S L O W L Y!
I mean this guy didn’t even slow down the slightest bit, or consider that maybe the bus was stopped for a reason.
Slow the fuck down. —Owner of an Angry Heart
This article appears in May 13-19, 2010.
Wow ! Too bad you couldn’t get the license plate number. You may have had a new rider joining you once the courts got finished with him.
I wonder how little time one gets for killing a baby in a cross walk while driving on the wrong side of the road ?
Probably 1 day considered served by a day in court !
I know someone who got killed in a crosswalk by this type of dangerous driving. The driver didn’t stop to think why the vehicle in front was stopping or notice the crosswalk, just pulled into the left lane and continued driving…right into the pedestrian who had the right to cross. A life lost and lives ruined for the sake of a 10 second wait.
I can’t stand people that do this!! I too know of a young girl in Dartmouth who died this way :(. The exact same was as Oceanlady described. And I don’t think anything too bad happened to the driver. A fine I believe and maybe some jail time. She KILLED someone because of her reckless driving and negligence and gets nothing but a guilty conscience. I have heard the parents say they are not mad the at the driver though…I don’t know how!!
Report his license plate number.
that’s the time when you wish you had a rocket launcher on you. i see this shit happen all the fucking time, and when i do, i call the cops and give them the tag number of offending vehicle. if you have gotten a ticket for this, anyone, it might have been me, doing the job the cops can’t catch you at. and yes, i hope i get every fucking asshole that does this shit. if you kill someone, then your life will be real hell then. SLOW THE FUCK DOWN, AND BE MORE AWARE OF WHAT THE FUCK YOU ARE DOING. AND STAY OFF YOUR FUCKING PHONE WHILE DRIVING.
Truck’s driver probably thought the bus was at a bus stop. That’s why we need bus pullovers at all stops and why MT should not be allowed to have bus stops in traffic lanes on multi-lane streets.
i was thinking that maybe transit should have the same type of flags that school buses have on the sides. flag out, not safe to pass, flag folded, go with caution.
I’m not excusing the ass in the truck, but it’s worth pointing out that many bus stops are located at sensationally dangerous spots…like just in front of a pedestrian crosswalk when you consider the flow of traffic. We can bitch about the reckless drivers but we’re also always going to have them, so it’s common sense to take them into account. Relocating some of the bus stops would be one way of adjusting to the reality of idiots on the roads.
L.S. that’s really not a bad idea.
You see all the school buses with side stop signs.
Seems to work to keep the kids safer.
OR at least we’re hearing less about school bus kids getting hit by cars.
I’m new to Halifax and come from a smaller city, and I find driving in Halifax challenging. To me it looks like the road system here is overly complicated, signs and lights are not consistently placed, some yield signs don’t make sense and should be merge signs, and there is that Armdale rotary where I find confused drivers on regular basis (oh, and the crosswalk just at the exit of the rotary…good one!). I agree with Realist in Dartmouth also that some bus stops are placed in strange places like just after/before a corner. Maybe people who planned this city’s roads and transit system routes never drove the entire city to find out the best and safest way to organize them.
I don’t find Halifax drivers particularly bad mannered (I come from a city where pick-up trucks would drive on the sidewalk to avoid waiting at the red light for a right turn), but I do find that people do not drive with consistent speed. Some drive way above the speed limit, while others drive below the speed limit on highway; both are dangerous. I can’t blame only the drivers though, when merging lanes to highways do not have a speed limit posted. I find myself wondering how fast I should be driving on regular basis around here.
the signage here can be a challenge….always be prepared for someone slamming on their brakes to let some ducks go across
Bus stops are located near the corners so buses can have easier access to pull in/out. You wouldn’t want them to have to parallel park one of those things.
hey mr. blue, i was hoping we would get to play boston but i guess philly will do…gohabsgo
I was worried about playing Boston because of the ex-Hab effect, I didn’t want Recchi or Ryder to become famous for beating their former team. Go Habs!
check out youtube for the halak ad spoof…very funny
@newtohalifax
You might not have been here long, but you’ve identified many of HRM’s ongoing traffic woes.
The merge/yield issue has been a problem for a long time and a significant number of drivers don’t seem to know the difference. It makes me wonder where a lot of people learned to drive. Out on the “back forty” where there was no other traffic perhaps?
Another behaviour I see a lot is drivers pulling out into oncoming traffic and apparently expecting the other drivers to slam on their brakes to accommodate them. It’s almost like these idiots have a predetermined amount of time they will wait for a break and then just GO regardless of whether other vehicles are coming or not. It happens a lot and I don’t understand it.
Many of the crosswalks are poorly located and poorly marked. I’d classify a lot of them as death traps.
People do get killed in crosswalks by vehicles passing other stopped vehicles. In fact, it’s the most common type of crosswalk pedestrian fatality. Passing at a crosswalk is illegal for this reason but it doesn’t seem to stop some drivers from doing it. My brother-in-law was hit in a crosswalk in this kind of situation and fortunately lived to tell the tale, but many others aren’t so lucky.
I think HRM should either upgrade crosswalks with improved visibility markings and signage or GET RID OF THEM ALTOGETHER!
Don’t hold your breath on this one though. HRM’s traffic authority planners think status quo is just fine. They are on the public record as saying that using crosswalks is more dangerous than jaywalking, but they refuse to make ANY changes. This is what passes for “traffic engineering know-how” in this city, but I call it plain stupidity.
Another thing that pisses me off is the number of drivers that park with impunity either on or right next to crosswalks. Where are the cops or the folks who write tickets when you need them?
Wait a minute. This isn’t my bitch. Maybe I should have written my own!
we were discussing this very thing at the shop today, when you are yielding you may have to stop/slow down…when you are merging please do not slam on your brakes in front of me. yes mr. farmer you should write your own bitch
I find everywhere you go, doesn’t matter where, everyone always complains about traffic and drivers being horrible (everyone else except them, of course) and the road system being fucked up, with a hundred ideas of their own on how to fix it. Because, you know, all those traffic engineers who spent four years in school studying the subject are just a bunch of morons.
It’s the same here in Edmonton. While drivers are kind of shitty, how people complain about the road system being complicated is beyond me – they’re all NUMBERED streets in a (mainly) grid pattern, people! How hard is it to figure out how to get to 101 Ave if you’re on 118 Ave? Duhhh, maybe it’s 17 blocks south? And if you’re on 118 Ave, believe me, you’re going to want to get away from there as quickly as possible!
@qpmzwonxeibcruv
The background and training required to land a job as a traffic engineer, that is, someone tasked with the job of planning and maintaining traffic infrastructure for an urban area, isn’t as concentrated and demanding as you might imagine.
You take a civil engineer/ civil engineering technologist and give them a one semester course in “traffic engineering principles” and presto! you have a traffic engineer. Those are the specialists. Many people who fulfill this function don’t even have that much exposure to the subject. The would-be traffic engineer then gets a job in a city bureaucracy where the first thing they are told when they walk in the door is “forget everything you learned in school kid – this is the REAL world and we don’t have time for that”. They get a desk and a paycheck and are made to understand that new ideas aren’t welcome and “rocking the boat” won’t endear you to your boss or your boss’s boss.
Simple bureaucratic inertia is much of the reason why poorly designed traffic infrastructure lives on in some locations, even though new ideas and techniques are available.
Try crossing a street in Quebec. The amount of assfucks who go through red lights, and the amount of peds who think crossing on red lights isn’t going to mold their ass into a hood ornament is mind boggling.
I’m pretty sure I’m going to end up coming back to hfx dead.