I was turning into a major intersection today and came damn close to hitting a woman who was crossing the street in accordance with the "walk" sign.
(Digression. Note to self: STOP THE DISTRACTING RUNNING COMMENTARY [TO YOURSELF] ABOUT YOUR DAY ON YOUR WAY HOME. End of digresion.)
I walk a lot, so I have nearly been the victim of vehicular manslaughter many a time. Being one myself, usually I am quite conscious of pedestrians and as long as they are following the rules, I yield to them. (Because seriously? The MOST ANNOYING THING is a jaywalker, and although I jaywalk myself now and then I have ZERO sympathy for jaywalkers.)
This woman I almost hit was abiding by the rules.
The woman in the car following me felt obligated to pull up alongside me at the next stop light, roll down her window and say "DID YOU SEE HER??? BE CAREFUL!!" To which I had three responses, in the following order:
A) Like I didn't feel bad enough about the near-hit.
B) Like I needed a random stranger criticizing my driving.
C) Like an entire five minutes later, a reprimand would even be remotely effective. Hello, lady? Have you seen our justice system lately?
Sheesh... did she have to?!? Like you didn't feel bad already. I've been in a similar embarrassing situation (or two) myself, and I'm always so nervous driving through pedestrian-heavy locations like Berkeley and San Francisco.
ReplyDeleteThen sometimes you get asshole pedestrians, like this old hippie yesterday who spat on the ground to show his displeasure at our attempt to turn right on red (perfectly legal), even though we (I wasn't driving) stopped *immediately* as soon as we saw him speed into the crosswalk on his bike. We barely even moved (it was like foot-on-and-off-the-brake in 1 or 2 seconds...seriously). People suck.
Oh, don't even get me started on the goddamned BIKERS.
ReplyDeleteugh, yeah, i hate traffic vigilantes. as for jaywalkers, there's the intelligent kind, the suicidal kind, and the oblivious kind. as long as they fall in the intelligent kind, i don't care.
ReplyDeletei remember once i was 16 and ran a stop sign (yeah, i know, i was a terrible driver for the first 4 years). this lady actually tailed me for several blocks when i noticed she was tailing me so i led her round and round one block many many times. finally i stopped, leaned out my window and yelled, "what the hell do you want?" well, i probably shouldn't have because she got out of her car and started screaming at me for running the stop sign. the ironic thing was, she was no where near the stop sign when i ran it.