Pedestrians and Traffic

Welcome back!

This may turn into a bit of a rant, but I will try to share my thoughts on the subject as well. As a current walker making drivers aware of safety for crossing pedestrians is very important to me. The main topic in this post will be about crossing rules and safety.

So on my walking route there are several intersection that I have to cross and many driveways that I have to pay attention to. For the most part it goes fine and I have not yet been in an accident. However with some of the actions I see taken at intersections this is a growing concern of mine. First of all if you are a driver you really should only be turning if a) the light is green for your lane or b) if the intersection has a turn light then you turn when that light is on. You should not be trying to turn when a pedestrian is crossing or has the right away (ie. the pedestrian crossing light is on). I have seen this happen a lot lately and it makes intersections less safe than they should be. Wait until the light is green and pedestrians are not crossing. One or two minutes will not hurt your travel travel time and if it does leave earlier. This is not a hard thing to do to ensure pedestrians feel safe.

Second issue is drivers thinking they "own the intersection" and stop in the middle of a pedestrian walking space. Are you really that impatient that you have to force pedestrians to walk around you into the intersection center?

Third issue is trying to speed through stop signs where lights are not available. Those stop signs are again there to help keep pedestrians safe. Stop for 2 minutes and look for pedestrians. Again this won't hurt your travel time and if it does just leave earlier.

Last issue is pedestrians making intersections unsafe for themselves. If the walk light is not on you do not have the right away. Wait for the light to change, 1 or 2 minutes won't hurt your travel time and again if it does leave 1 or 2 minutes earlier.

So rant over. Let me share my thoughts about road rules and the theme of the above rant. Road rules are there for safety so why don't people follow them? You don't want a strike on your insurance do you? Or run the risk of hurting another person? In my perfect world I would like all drivers use the knowledge they receive from their driver lessons. They show what you should and should not do. How to operate a vehicle and how to keep people safe on the road. It's not like these rules rules are foreign to drivers, they just don't want to listen to them it seems. Drivers also seem to be in a rush.

Three of the scenarios above would be avoided if drivers just slowed down. We all have schedules and tasks to get done and more often than not these tasks don't always get done on time causing us to run latter than usual. This is not a reason to rush though. Take your time. Explain why you were latter than expected and plan for more time in the future. Any reasonable person will understand if you explain it to them and if they don't then in my opinion you might want to rethink why you are working with that person or using their service.

So as a walking citizen please try to keep the roads safe. Take your time, follow your teachings and plan for enough time.

Like I said this post would be more ranty opposed to helpful or thoughtful, but it is a concerning to me so I had to share my thoughts. In my next post I will be talking about individual treatment and how the phrase "treat others how you want to be treated" really doesn't make much sense. Be sure to check out Should You Treat Others Fairly? in the next couple days!

 Bye for now,

 Superskull85 - The Dark Skull