Today, I was walking across a crosswalk and everything was perfectly fine. Until a woman in a truck swept around the corner and almost hit me! Like honestly, don’t drive something so god damn big as a Ford truck if you can barely see over the steering wheel! At least get something to boost your ass, so you can see where you’re going. —The lady in the pink sweater
This article appears in Mar 3-9, 2011.
Look both ways.
Good call, Sebastien. As a motorist I often see pedestrians turning abruptly onto crosswalks without looking either way, and usually while listening to their Ipod or talking on their cell phones, only to get upset with a motorist for not noticing them and cutting them off.
As a cyclist/walker, I typically find a mixture of good, accommodating motorists and asshole motorists who honk and yell for some fucking reason that I’ll never know. Either way it’s in my best interest to respect the car/truck because it’s big and can kill me. I find it a bit odd that other pedestrians are so willing to put their lives into the hands of incompetent or rage-filled motorists.
About a week ago or whenever that really bad rain storm was, where a woman died on the number 7 highway, I was driving on that highway going toward Dartmouth Crossing. Where I was, the speed limit was 110. Now given the road conditions I was going slower and as I came up to the point at which a lot of the lanes start merging, I saw these two idiot kids. They were walking ON THE HIGHWAY. I slowed down quite a bit and went into another lane. They weren’t even on the side of the highway or anything, they were walking between an on-ramp and another lane. I honked my horn and they didn’t even look. I could have been an out of control car unable to stop and they just kept slowly strolling along in their puffy coats and sweat pants. The next day on my way home from my mom’s in Dartmouth, I was driving down Main Street where it turns into quite a steep hill. The weather was still not so great and it was nighttime and there was yet another idiot kid just slowly walking across 5 lanes of traffic, not at a crosswalk. I actually had to pretty much slow down to 20 or I would have hit him. The whole time he had a smile on his face. Like WTF is with that? I kind of wish I wasn’t able to stop or slow down in time and creamed him. I really don’t care about people like that at this point, it’s happened so many times!
canned – I always give a cyclist a couple of little bip-bip’s of the horn, to let them know I’m there, not because I’m pissed off. Screeching brakes & a steady horn means I’m pissed 😉
they have special blocks of woods tied to the pedals o.p.
Hugo Phurst: I do the same, on occasion. But I was referring to the steady horn & screaming out of car/truck window for no reason whatsoever.
Mel, the 107 and 118 in that area are both 100 km/hr, I think… careful!! As for the idiots walking on the highway, do you see Darwin hovering over the trees watching and giggling? I see people bicycling there all the time.
I saw 3 guys trying to cross the Circ near Tim’s and 500 feet up the road is a BRAND NEW PEDWAY. Darwin again…
Sorry yeah, I meant 100 :P!
Dammit – motorists need heads that swivel too! I can’t tell you the number of times I’m walking/running on the sidewalk and some bonehead is pulling out of a parking lot or road and only looks left because they’re waiting for a break in traffic, and don’t bother to look right before they plant themselves on the sidewalk.
Grr… I’ve slapped a lot of hoods, just to wake these boneheads up and let them know they should be looking both ways too!
Sometime, it won’t be me, an alert pedestrian, it’ll be a mom with a carriage and toddler distracting her.