Coincidentally, I saw the immediate aftermath of someone getting run
over today in front of my office. Drivers have to make a cross-traffic
left turn to get from Mission to Beale, and they always rush that to get
through before the light changes. Today, an older man was hit hard
enough to cause extensive physical damage to the car; the vehicle must
have been going very fast making that turn. Almost without question,
this was the driver's fault since the pedestrian was in the cross walk.
-- Donald
_________________________
Donald F. Robertson
San Francisco
******
I must disagree completely with the above statement. I walk a lot daily,
use MUNI daily, but also drive during the evenings and weekends because MUNI
is so unreliable and infrequent during the off-hours. Pedestrians are as
much to blame. Many pedestrians try to "claim" their right of way and
wonder why they get hit. I have seen too many instances of people in cars
trying to make a left turn, only to have a pedestrian walk directly in front
of them without looking, daring the driver to turn. This backs up traffic,
causes people to get caught in the middle of the intersection, which then
causes people to blame the driver for something he has no control over. A
driver can't predict what a person on a corner is going to do...if no one is
crossing and he turns, and then someone jumpos into the crosswalk to make it
before the light changes, the driver is screwed.
This is why Guliani is trying to stop Jaywalking in NY, because pedestrians
do stupid things to mess up traffic. I know because I used to do it myself.
I used to have this "me first" attitude about walking and riding muni until
I started driving in the city. It's amazing to see how a single selfish
person can screw up traffic, which can make busses late.
A perfect example of this is 18th and Castro, where I used to live. It used
to be the case that there was no delay between the stopping of a blinking
light and the commencing of the opposing green light. The blinking red
light for pedestrians means, "don't start walking because you won't make it
to the other side before the light changes." But Castro-ites for some
reason think this means "You can start walking across while the light
blinks, up until the hand is solid." This screws up the 33 route all the
time because cars trying to turn right and left onto Castro from 18th get
caught in the middle of the street while the opposing light is green and
people are still walking across. I've had people literally leap out in
front of me when I was in the intersection, only to receive a tongue lashing
from angered (and obviously stupid) pedestrians when I was forced to slam on
the brakes. Busses behind people caught ligke this can't get through the
intersection, sometimes for two or three turns of the light.
Finally someone wised up and put a delay between the time the hand stops
flashing and the onset of the green light. This has cleared up the problem
a lot because people won't cross when the light is red. Point is, SF
wouldn't have to do this if pedestrians werent so stupid and selfish about
crossing. They often screw up the schedules of the very MUNI we all want to
save.
I'm not saying drivers aren't at fault, but that the newspaper was entirely
correct by saying that pedestrians share the blame for a lot of backed up
traffic and accidents.
Jeremy Sammons