I am going to start carrying around a pocket full of rocks so when idiot drivers pretend not to see me in the crosswalk, I can toss a little rock at their car! I bet they will notice me then! I push the button, I wait, and crossing Portland St. is still like playing frogger. I understand some drivers can’t stop on a dime, but when you are 500 yards away and the posted speed limit is 50kms, you have more than enough time to stop! —Tired of City Drivers
This article appears in Jun 9-15, 2011.
Yeah, drivers here are awful, of course I went down to Cape Breton on the weekend, the driving gets even worse.
Had a friend who was killed in a crosswalk a few years ago. The driver sped through a red light, hit my friend putting him in a coma, and the driver didn’t stop. A week later my friend was taken off life support. It took two years, the driver was caught and went to trial. They got a couple thousand dollars in fines for taking a life because they had to get to their destination a few seconds earlier. The driver didn’t even stop, he left my friend in the street bleeding, unconscious. Thankfully for eyewitnesses that were able to identify the driver, and camera’s that caught the incident.
Pedestrians… listen I know it sucks to cross the street in some places, to me the city is as much to blame as the drivers, because some of these crosswalks are in shitty places. But throw a rock at my car and I WILL physically harm you. Nothing I repeat NOTHING gives you the right to damage someone’s property. Car’s aren’t cheap and neither is maintaining them and there’s enough hazards out there without worrying about uppity assholes throwing rocks. I’d beat your ass AND send you the bill.
Rocks are for pussies, pack some bricks and I’ll know you are serious OP 😉
One evening, I was waiting outside Halifax Shopping Centre (with a large group of pedestrians, I might add) for the light to change so I (we all) could cross to the bus terminal. The light changed and we set off. I walk super fast so I was already on the other side already when it happened, but while the group of pedestrians was halfway through their crossing, a car decided they weren’t going to wait to make that left turn from that place where the Wal-Mart and all that stuff is and started speeding towards the pack (gaggle? group? murder? herd? Pack?) of pedestrians. A lady pitched her iced capp from Timmy Ho-Ho’s at the driver’s windshield and did THAT ever get the driver’s attention!
Good luck with that OP. The drivers can call and report you for vandalism and then get a free paint job at your expense. 🙂
I have no problem stopping for people in cross walks….BUT I do not stop for those individuals on bikes that think is ok to bike in the cross walk. You can’t have it both ways. Your either a pedistrian or a biker.
Are you 80 years old? Can you move quickly or what?
Those buttons are for young children, handicapped, overweight people who cant move quicky, and mothers to be. If you aren’t one of these people, just go when no one is coming. Only able bodied people use these so they can walk around with their head in the clouds.
Screw you man/woman. I’m a pedestrian and cyclist and I don’t use that fucking button. Learn to cross the street or go to a country where there aren’t so many laws that keep stupid genes in the human gene pool and learn there how to do it.
the op could be eighty
@Tommy…physical harming would mean you would have to actually SEE ME, and since the drivers I am bitching about CLEARLY SEE RIGHT through me, how on earth could you see which direction the rock came from….I have a car, and a motorcycle, I am aware of the cost of operating and maintaining both, but because I enjoy walking, I park and ride, or park and walk…and dude…I’m a chick and you couldn’t beat my ass if I gave you one of the rocks outta my pocket!!