But then when Sgt. Mike Flynn says
"Drivers get frustrated and hit the gas, and that makes it even more
dangerous,‘’ he says. “The light cycle is so fast that the longest you
wait is 15 or 20 seconds.”
Why not ticket dangerous drivers instead…?
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Because freedom.
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Sounds fair to me.
You do know that other countries have no problem implementing income-based fines, right?
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Apparently, the truck driver, having learned that pedestrians can walk in the road, has decided to drive in the sidewalk.
edit: there’s a whole legacy of assholery going on.
The sidewalk is blocked by construction, or other bullshit such as some property owner wanting to park his shit on the former sidewalk, so pedestrians must cross the road.
the crosswalk is blocked with a fence, so pedestrians must cross the road diagonally, etc, etc
Now, if pedestrians had internal combustion engines instead of legs, backtracking to the last usable intersection would be merely annoying.
But it’s probably a few miles of trudging back on foot, so it’s hard work.
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Meh. I was referring to where I do live, not where I don’t live. That seemed somehow more relevant.
Change it to “air conditioned car” and “stinking hot sidewalk”, since your imagaination appears to have failed you completely.
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Where you live is more relevant than the subject of the story. Got it.
Oh do keep up. Parts of the discussion had moved on to a general discussion about crossing the road and vehicle-pedestrian interactions.
Besides, even if your personal zeitgeist is utterly confounded by the concept of a conversation evolving, you can - with a minimum of imagination - situate my comment to anywhere in the world. Including LA. The comment was that it’s generally more comfortable and convienent to wait in a car than it is to wait on the side of the road. I know you’re having trouble with this, though, so I’ll restate my post, just for you:
[quote]Meh. I figure that if you’re in a car, you’re sitting comfortably in the cool while I’m out here in the bright sunshine. You can fucking wait a few seconds while I get over to the other side of the road and under some shelter.
Conversely, I figure that if I’m in a car, I’m sitting comfortably with the radio and air-con on, so I’ll chill here for a couple of seconds so you don’t have to stand for another couple minutes on that sweltering street corner.[/quote]
Happy?
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if you see a pedestrian waiting to cross the street and you can safely stop you are required to do so and allow them to proceed
Just for clarity, BTW, California drivers are only required to yield when pedestrians are in the crosswalk — not just standing on the sidewalk at the corner peering quizzically down the street.
Good thing, too. Because in LA, about 75% of the people* standing on the corner peering down the street are looking to see if their bus is coming. (-:
Another 21% or so* are pedestrians like me, who are peering down the street looking for a gap in traffic, because we’d much rather cross BEHIND cars than in front of them.
…and then there’s the final 4% or so* (usually out-of-town tourists or San Franciscans), standing on the sidewalk on the corner wondering why none of the cars are slowing down. (-:
As for the ‘considerate’ drivers who stop for me while I’m still on the sidewalk and wave me across the road, despite the fact that there are three other lanes of traffic that HAVEN’T EVEN SLOWED:
Um, thanks, no, I’ll wait.
Plus of course, the cars who have stopped behind them, but who don’t see me, who then impatiently change lanes and pass them in the other lane juuuuust as I step into that other lane… =:-O
And of course, by stopping, they almost always manage to close up the first gap I’ve seen approaching in a while )-:
So, really, thanks for trying to be considerate, but as long as I’m still on the sidewalk, I’m not in the crosswalk, and you don’t have to stop — and I’d really rather you didn’t, because I’d rather cross safely AFTER the cars, not walk out in front of em’ and hope they stop. (-:
*All estimates are estimates. Estimates are based on volume, not weight, and may have come unsettled during whipping and fondling.
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So what we really need is a revised icon-decoder plaque, right?
(author unknown - nicked from the intertubes without permission for purposes of discussion)
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“When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.”
- Socrates
It’s only slander if its untrue. You are in his living room, and you are behaving abominably for a guest.
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So much this. I’m waiting to cross behind a car, the car stops in the middle of the intersection for me — great, now I look like the one who’s selfishly inconveniencing everyone. I wait for the car, then the driver waits for me, blocking cross-traffic, now half a dozen people have come to a halt instead of just me waiting two seconds like I had planned. And which I wound up doing anyway. It wasn’t even a matter of one person’s convenience trumping another’s, because nobody in the situation was spared inconvenience.
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