Recently, I have witnessed a number of pedestrians crossing the street without looking to see if there are any vehicles coming. In some instances, there were even a few pedestrians who didn t seem to care at all that there were vehicles coming, and they actually took their time crossing the road, expecting the vehicles around them to stop. And stop, we did. After all, what else were we supposed to do run them over?
Pedestrians have quite a bit of power over motor vehicles when it comes to the roadways. It is pretty ironic when you consider the fact that pedestrians are almost always outnumbered by vehicles (except if there s a major parade or athletic event taking place). However, the rules of the road state quite explicitly that all vehicles MUST yield to pedestrians..even if they are jaywalking even if they do run after a ball into the middle of the street blindly, etc. These rules are, again, put in place to protect us. How awful would it be to be driving your car and then all of a sudden you realize that you ve struck a pedestrian? How would that affect your driving. How would you explain that sort of a situation to your friends and/or family?
When I was in college, I was part of the women s cross country and track teams. As part of our daily routine, we would go for group runs around the local area. There was one run in particular that stood out in my head (among others) in which one of my teammates recounted a near death experience that she and another one of my teammates almost had. They had just gotten back from running a quick 30 minute loop and were on the sidewalk next to a brick building that housed a popular American fare restaurant. All of a sudden, they heard the screeching of tires, and when they turned around, they saw a car just a few feet back from them slam into the side of the brick wall to the restaurant that they had just seconds before run by. At this point in their run, they were only two minutes or so from the track (where we would normally meet up before and after runs), and when they got back, they were both visibly shaken.
A bunch of us stood around (coaches included) as they told the story of what had just happened minutes before to the rest of us. Some of us exchanged hugs with them, thankful that they hadn t been hurt, while others of us stood in awe. This was a popular running loop that we had all done at some point, and it could have well been any one of us running that loop that day. Who is to say that we would have been as lucky. The next day, the coaches held a brief meeting about being aware of your surroundings. As for the driver, it turned out that he hadn t been paying attention and tried to over correct after he had slammed on his breaks to avoid running a red light.
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