Stop Racing Through Crosswalks

The other day, one of the many good-looking women I’ve come to know in our fair town, stopped me on the sidewalk told me she had something I should write about. She was all fired up and broke into a tirade about how she had just almost been hit by a car. I asked where she was when this happened and she pointed behind her and told me she had just been in the middle of that crosswalk and some jerk just sped up as he saw her standing there. What was worse, he was in new Corvette. I shook my head in agreement and smiled at her. She got on my case,

“Don’t smile about it, write about it in your blog. I walk all over the place and this happens way too often.”

So I wiped the smile off my face, to appease her, and I told her I encountered the same thing all the time, but how do you stop it? People are just jerks. This lady works at Bunches, the florist on Santa Cruz Avenue which I constantly use as corridor from the parking lot behind Carry Nation’s to the crosswalk at the foot of Mountain Charley’s stairway entrance. It is a great corridor, too. The gorgeous flowers, the sweet fragrances, the cool, humid air and the charming ladies who work there make for a welcome bunch of nice little breaks during the day’s bustling around, to and fro, all about town. Half the time, some new, exotic and unusual blossom will catch my eye and stop me in my busy, little tracks and I will have to ask about it. These are nice, pleasant little breaks in the business of my overly important rambles. Ha, so what comes to mind?

“Don’t hurry, don’t worry.

You’re only here for a short visit.

So be sure to stop and small the flowers.”

Walter Hagen

Anyway, back to crosswalks . . .

I promised her that I would, indeed, mention the crosswalks in my work but, offhand, I really didn’t see how much could be said about them. As we parted company, I had an interesting revelation; for all the people suggesting different topics for me to write about, I was beginning to feel like a newspaper columnist without a newspaper. I do have a long of list of things people want me to cover. Such a dilemma.

Of course, for these last couple of days I have become much more aware of the behavior of drivers as they approach the crosswalks I’m using. Remarkably, it is surprising how many people ignore occupied crosswalks. Just last night I stood in the middle of the oncoming lane of traffic, clearly in a crosswalk and I counted five cars ignoring me as they bustled past on Santa Cruz Avenue. This is outrageous. Here is the California Vehicle Code Section relating to pedestrians:

.

V C Section 21950 Right of Way at Crosswalks

Right-of-Way at Crosswalks

21950. (a) The driver of a vehicle shall yield the right-of-way to a pedestrian crossing the . . .

(Click here to read conclusion)