Dangerous Ditmas Park Drivers

Crossing Dorchester Road on the evening of March 14^th at the corner of East 19^th Street I turned my head in the direction the traffic was not coming, just out of habit, and noticed two headlights getting brighter in my direction, which meant the car was heading toward me against traffic.  For my safety sake I dashed to get clear of the car going the wrong way and called out “Hey, you’re going the wrong way on a one way street.” I then saw a young man in his 20s in the passenger seat with his hands up in the air shrugging his shoulders. The car then made the turn onto 19^th street avoiding the oncoming traffic

Unfortunately for me this was the second incident in almost as many days where I was faced with an aggressive driver, who thought it more important to get to his destination than to consider safety. 

The other incident happened crossing at Church Ave and Rugby Road about 5:15pm, two days prior, with two small children on either side of me. We waited for the light to change in our favor, stepped off the curb when a very flashy gold car sped up and sharply made a right turn in front of us, missing hitting us by inches. Rather than waiting for us to cross first, he risked our lives all to get the grand opportunity of standing in traffic at the next light.  A very similar incident happened to the children and myself at the same intersection only two weeks prior.

All these occurrences reminded me that in the winter at about 8:00pm I started to cross Albemarle at Rugby when I saw a car idling on Albemarle Road with the headlights on and the minute I put my foot out on to road the car gunned the motor and headed at a clip in my direction. I quickly jumped back onto the curb saving my life.  At the same moment the car stopped as if waiting for me to try and cross again. I decided not to move back on to the road and within a moment the car drove off.

What precisely is going on here?  Not only are these drivers being reckless, but they seem to be upping the ante by taking the risk of getting close to the pedestrian (neigh children) and then speeding off. Is this perhaps a version of the old “chicken” road game, where two cars drive towards each other until one yields and if neither yield the unthinkable happens, but here the pedestrian is the now the unwilling/unsuspecting participant of the game.  Is there a thrill involved here? I cannot know the motives behind this behavior, but something is terribly wrong.  I could lob the blame solely on the audacity of youth with all but one of the incidents being young persons but that would be too pat.

When things like this happen I start to think how have we gotten to this point and how we can make a change in our thinking patterns, our societal attitudes that would make people consider human life valuable and worth taking pains to save.

What happens to us when we get behind the wheel? Have we forgotten that when we get into a car we are virtually in a very powerful machine and it’s our responsibility to consider that as in the “chicken game” that if you do not yield, the outcome could be disastrous, only for want of a patient moment. Is getting to our appointment more valuable than possibly hurting someone? And what of our youth who are growing up to be drivers and learning through the medium of video games, television and film that driving aggressively is the name of the game (especially with Hollywood heroes taking ridiculous auto risks).  I recently watched the film G-Force with guinea pigs being the heroes involved in a car chase where they caused all kinds of crashes in order to get away, without any consideration that there were pedestrians on the sidewalk/in their cars or even considering that killing the villain was not truly the way to go. Remember Hollywood takes no responsibility for the information it feeds your children; they only want to sell tickets and make money.  It is up to us to filter this information and guide our children through this mayhem of excessive auto aggression.

Also consider that when the object of a video game is killing people and enjoyment is associated with that, that there is a disconnect between the action of killing and the actual object being humans—then children and later adults might consider death little more than a blip on a video screen.  We do not have to go along with this trend but let’s create the trend and demand better quality in media by out and out rejecting it.

What we can do as drivers is be more patient and pass along this attitude to those around us, be good role models for our children as they witness us driving and let them know at an early age that driving is a responsibility not to be taken lightly and movies are not reality and in life there are real consequences.  And then, of course as pedestrians we have to very careful and never assume the driver will yield as he should.  Going forward as the Ditmas Park community we may want to take action with unmarked police cars laying in wait at notorious intersections to catch these perpetrators before the unthinkable happens.