This article appears in Dec 6-12, 2007.
Rainy Days Must Make You Blind
To the guy driving the light colored car who nearly ran me down in the crosswalk on Saturday October 14, at 7:10 pm, as you turned left onto Dunbrack: You nearly killed me. Do you even understand that you nearly took my life in an intersection!? Did you
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I’m sorry you got such a scare. It must have been very frightening for you. I hope that you were wearing some kind of relfective material on your person as it is very hard to SEE people at night in the rain. Even a stripe of reflective tape on your purse or at the hemline of your jacket could help. I’m not defending the driver in any way, but I’ve had to slam on my brakes hard too for not seeing a ped until the very last minute on a rainy night. Try to consider the drivers have to contend with the glare of oncoming traffic and light pollution from signs as well as the regular dodge ball effort of other drivers skipping in front of them on a left or right hand turn having misjudged the time and distance they need to successfully make the manoeuvre. Keep aware and safe :).
I have to take the side of the driver for this one. Rainy days are hard for visibility, with glare, poor road markings, some cars fog up pretty bad inside due to the humidity, etc, etc. Anytime you cross a road, cross walk or not, you should pay complete attention and not take for granted that cars will automatically stop. A car hits a person and it’s the person that gets hurt not the other way! So swallow your pride and the attitude of “well I have the right of way” and just be that much more careful!
Sorry for your close call but stating that the driver would spend life in prison is WAY off. He probably wouldn’t do time at all. Drunk drivers kill people and get off just in time to catch happy hour.
Let us review road safety…At a crosswalk, you stop, look right and left, look right and left again, assure that cars can SEE YOU, proceed in a steady pace after the cars have STOPPED for you.Sounds like you didn’t follow your role as a pedestrian, especially on a rainy NIGHT where traction is unreliable.A human doesn’t contain a bumper, so respect the power behind a motor vehicle.