filed in Daily Life
What Did You Let Go Of, Today?
While walking my dog during rush hour in the neighborhood, people text through stop signs and nearly run us over in the process. This happens every day, so I try to let go of it. What I didn’t let go of, was a woman ambling by me as we crossed Sunset Blvd, a very busy intersection, with her head buried in her phone. I shouted, “look up!” and regretted it immediately, feeling like a scold.
Banner by Ashley Brown Durand
Discussion
8 comments for “What Did You Let Go Of, Today?”
Leave a Reply
About this Site
FIRST PERSON SINGULAR is a guide to surviving, thriving and sometimes just getting through a single day. Created by Wendy Braitman (more…)
Follow First Person Singular
Greatest Hits
© 2010 First Person Singular. 
Did you shout it with a sense of urgency, as though something was about to fall on her? 🙂
Texting while driving has to stop and I can’t simply let it go. These folks are a great danger; the
idiot pedestrians with their heads down are merely a great annoyance.
I stand by my tactic of bumping into them/not changing my course if they can’t be bothered to
look where they’re going. If I’m feeling especially grumpy and I’m driving, I’ll honk my horn at them. Extra points if they drop their gadget.
Texting is so rampant in L.A. If I didn’t let go, I’d go crazy. But it’s such a danger, I completely agree.
Was she doing something dangerous? I get a little offended by this, because we have such a penchant for blaming vulnerable road users when they get hurt, often through no fault of their own. Seriously, search Twitter for #pedestriansafetytips. It was a spoof a while back, but it speaks to how we let the operators of multi-tons weapons off scott free and disparage other for DARING to use the road in any way, even 100% legally.
My personal story involves a tour bus and a smart phone. Walking from the subway to work, I got to the corner, looked up from said phone, saw that I had plenty of time left to cross the street (we have the crosswalks with the countdown here…I could have crossed the street twice with the time remaining), and proceeded to cross, looking back at my phone but still stealing glances all around me. I got about 4 lanes across the 6 lane street when I saw a bus coming at me, making a left from behind me. I stopped, waited for him to clear the intersection and park (illegally), and then went to ask him if he was blind or just dumb. Among his excuses were that I had a don’t walk signal (not possible if he had a green to turn…there is no arrow at this intersection), he didn’t see me because I was looking at my phone (but he saw me looking at my phone, that man has SUPERPOWERS!), and vehicles always have the right of way but I didn’t see him because of my phone (scary that he got a CDL with such a poor understanding of traffic laws…also, if I didn’t see him, I would have walked smack into the side of the bus). So after some yelling, I decided that I had enough and called the police. *I* was scolded for using my phone while crossing the street, while he was told, fairly politely, that he was wrong and “needed to be more careful.” No ticket, no harsh words to him. It’s complete BS.
I was also actually hit (thankfully not hard) by a driver one time while crossing in front of him at a stop sign. He claimed not to see me, to which I looked up at the street lights, down at my tan jacket, and over at the bright purple umbrella I was carrying and said “SERIOUSLY?” He just shrugged, got back in his car, and left. The police refused to respond because I told them I was not injured spare a small bruise on my knee. The only thing I learned from that was to always tell the police I think I might have a broken bone if hit, just to get them out to the scene.
We were both pedestrians. In this particular case, she was more annoying than dangerous. That’s why I regretted it afterwards.
Note that I was not using my phone when the man hit me at the stop sign, just to be clear. He came to a complete stop, I proceeded to cross, got halfway in front of his car, and he hit the gas.
Look, I get annoyed by wavering peds who are too busy with their phone to see anything, too. But, ultimately, outside of a very few incidents I’ve seen where they’ve walked out into cross traffic (I seriously have to think back over 10 years to come up with an egregious example of this), the biggest risk they present is bumping into me while I’m *also* walking, which, honestly, is annoying but not dangerous. However, whenever a ped is hit around here, there’s always the inevitable “well, what did THEY do wrong?” I’ve even seen people blamed for being hit while on the sidewalk…because they were too close to the curb, or something. It’s a real problem, compounded – for me – when I watch people, daily, blow through the stop sign at my corner after barely slowing, speed down the street, push lights, and do all kinds of other extremely dangerous things. It’s just odd to me that we feel justified saying “PEDESTRIANS NEED TO PUT THE PHONE AWAY AND PAY ATTENTION!” but just shrug of flagrant traffic violations and reckless driver behavior like it’s to be expected.
Back in the spring, I was almost hit in a crosswalk (with the light/walk signal) by a CEMENT TRUCK that made an illegal turn, and then a TOUR BUS that followed him around the corner (the bus’s turn was legal, but the driver followed the truck and didn’t have a clear sight-line because of the truck to see if the crosswalk was clear). When I posted that up, the FIRST question was “where was your phone? In front of your face, AMIRITE?” L-O-fing-L. Actually, I had left my phone in my office, but even if I DID have my phone, why would that excuse those drivers’ behavior? THEY put tons of people at risk through illegal actions (this is a busy pedestrian intersection and it was lunchtime), and it should be THEIR fault, and THEY should be held responsible. Period.
Walking slowly through the crosswalk on the phone when there’s lots of traffic isn’t necessarily dangerous, but I find it inconsiderate. Which is not to say that reckless driving isn’t horrible.
Also, in the debate over who is impacted the most over inattentiveness, the pedestrian has significantly more to lose.
I walk a lot in L.A., and it can be really dangerous with cars zooming by, not ever expecting to find anyone in the crosswalks. Being a pedestrian has made me a more attentive driver, but being a driver has made me a more attentive pedestrian.