Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Whatever happened to looking both ways?

I am one of the "lucky" ones who spends times idling in traffic on a daily basis trying to make my way too and from work. With all this time spent in the car, you come across a lot of pedestrians. I'm all for walking to and from when you can, I certainly did enough of that during University, but it seems as though people are just getting dumber or they are testing drivers on whole new levels. Which doesn't seem like the smartest thing considering how many places have put in the "Distracted Driver" fines.

Case in point, on my way home one day, I notice a guy strolling leisurely out into the street, drinking his coffee, no where near the actual crosswalk. He failed to look both ways and only realized at the yellow line that he had cars coming at him from both directions. He then proceeded to do a panic twirl, trying to decide which way to run, almost losing that precious coffee in the process.

Luckily for him, I had been paying attention to this moron and stopped. The other guy driving didn't even slow down, either he wasn't paying as much attention or he thought the pedestrian deserved a bit of a scare for his moron move. - Yes, I do enjoy the word moron when it's particularly appropriate. (I actually have a You Moron hand gesture).

I also enjoy when you in a special right turning lane at a light and there is a person walking. You come to a complete stop (as you are supposed to do), then the pedestrian stands there arguing with you that you should go. Look dude(tte), I took the time to stop for you, you better friggin walk. Then you have the other people who just stand there, look at you, appear not to be crossing, then suddenly dash out in front of you. Then have the nerve to look annoyed at you when you are screeching your brakes to avoid hitting them.

Then we have Parking Lots Walkers. These are a whole other breed of annoying. The worst is the diagonal walker. You know who you are. Could you possibly take a longer way to cross the lot? This one always surprises me, especially since you know these people drove to the store as well and know how annoying it is to try and find a spot when trailing behind someone dragging their feet across the middle of the lane. That's when I get ½ tempted to find them in the stores and use my cart to continually block them by parking it diagonally in the aisle.

The pseudo pedestrians are also up there with Darwin Award Nominations. Which are bicyclists who pretend to be pedestrians when they find it convent to do so. Then they are shocked when the ride out on a Walk light and almost get hit. I'm sorry little bike dude, but you were driving on the road and then decided to drive on the crosswalk, without signalling your intentions. Do you not realize that you move a lot faster than a person walking and to anticipate what you are about to do would require a driver to have the power of premonition? You moron.

Then you have the especially smart people. Those who cannot WAIT for the light to change. They MUST cross the road at that instant. A friend told me of the following incident. He was about three cars back from a light, in rush hour traffic, when he noticed a guy weaving through the cars. The guy hopped the meridian between traffic, landing himself directly in front of a bus, which luckily for him, had only started to move, and promptly got bounced a few feet down the road from the impact. The idiot jumps up and just kept going, almost getting hit by two more cars before making it to the sidewalk. The poor bus driver had to take a minute before being able to move on... wonder how one reports this type of hit and run. Well, you see here officer...

I get these guys a lot, especially after getting off a city bus, they think that the bus stop location acts as an insta-crosswalk. My favourite was the guy who did the diagonal walk, with his back to me and crossed the street. He didn't check to see if there was anyone driving until after he got to the other side. He jumped slightly seeing that I was directly behind him, followed up by about 8 other cars all at a turtle crawl from his leisurely crossing. Yeah moron, you aren't on a cross walk, and imagine that you totally cut off a whole lot of drivers. He got the moron hand wave.

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