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It seems as if I'm posting a lot of stuff that I wrote awhile ago when it was relevant. I'm posting this because I don't want to waste it. I spent a lot of time on it (at least twenty minutes, maybe more).
The higher prices of gas have certainly caused drivers to find alternate means of getting around. One of these ways is to walk to places that they might have, in the past, driven to. (The reason I drive is that I only go shopping once each week, and I buy an enormous amount of food and drink. Do you know how much a ten-pound bag of potatoes weighs? It all fills my trunk completely. I could not carry all of these even in a strolling grocery carrier. Besides, the ice cream would be melted by the time I walked home.)
Good for the pedestrians... BUT... It is evident that many pedestrians (at least here in CA) do not know how to be pedestrians. They have driven so long that they don't know how to be safe walkers!
Examples:
1. They do not wait for the "Walk" sign. They start walking any time, even when the light is red. After all, they recall in the DMV books, "The pedestrian has the right of way."
2. The worst offenders are the teens. Whenever I drive down a street near their school at the wrong time, I just stop. They follow NO rules. They cross any street at any time, disregarding all lights -- every time. They don't even look... They simply cross the street, looking neither right nor left nor at the signal. Sometimes you have to wait 2 or 3 signal changes.
Do you have smart signals in your town? They are tripped by a car passing over a sensor. They're embedded in the street. If no one trips them after one iteration of a signal, they don't change until it's tripped again. This is a problem when you have to wait two or three signals for all the students to cross. You have to hope that there's no one behind you so that you can back up in order to trip it again. Or, hope that the sensor is far enough back to be tripped by a late-comer. All of the signals in my town are smart signals.
3. They walk really slowly, often stopping to talk to one another, right in the middle of the driving lane.
4. Sometimes, they do NOT monitor where their children are as they walk along. You never know when a child could decide to dart in any direction.
5. Often, they do hold onto their children, but stop to tie their shoe laces, or wipe their noses or any of the many things one must do for a child. This is not bad, but the middle of the driving lane is not the place to do it.
6 They jaywalk. You have to be especially careful so that you don't run over them.
7. If they wait for a signal, which they do at particularly busy intersections, they stand on the very edge of the curb, often with their toes sticking off the curb. Sometimes they are actually standing just off the curb. It is difficult to make turns with them in the way. It slows traffic and makes some drivers wait two signals just to make the turn..again, wasting gas.
8. Sometimes it is unfathomable why they stop in the middle of a driving lane. Sometimes they are rummaging in their purse or pockets. Sometimes they're just looking around. (They need to print out a driving guide from Yahoo or GoogleEarth or LocalSearch so that they know how to get to where they're walking, even if it is less than a mile.)
I think that the "Pedestrians have the right of way," when there are so many of them who obey NO rules, needs to be examined by the legislature again. They have no license plates, so they cannot even be documented and reported. One cannot call the sheriff because one cannot use a cell phone while driving. Even though there is no sheriff in sight... you never can tell. They would probably cite you for using the cell phone to call them instead of the pedestrian... who has the right of way.
I was looking through the categories here and I think we should have one that says "stupid." Well, maybe "unthinking." Or something like that.
