Cellphone + Pedestrian: Here I thought drivers were bad

The BBQ Pit
1

Jesus Christ with special sauce lettuce cheese pickles onions on a sesame seed bun!

Drivers distracted by cellphones are bad enough. They are operating relatively complex machinery, you can appreciate how a phone would take an ounce of attention away with disasterous results. But you, you stupid fuck, if you suffer from such a dearth of brain cells that you can’t rub two together in order to walk and chew gum at the same time, please, in the name of Alexander Graham Bell, hang up the fucking phone!

Stupid Fuck #1: Jabbering away on your phone , you got to an intersection. You didn’t look up to see the big red hand on the signal that means “Hey, Darwin candidate! Stop moving or you’ll die.” You didn’t look to see if, oh, maybe those big hunks of fast-moving death machines made of steel was barelling down that big concrete crossroad. You just casually stepped off the curb against the light, not a care in the world… and my cabbie nealry turned you into a thin-crust pizza with extra sauce.

Yeah, all that smoke and squealing tires? That was from evasive maneuvers to avoid you, fuckwad. Sorry it was so loud. The horn wasn’t us, that was the other car that tried to occupy the same escape route as us. I guess the horn tweaked something in your lizard brain because you looked up for a second, vaguely pondering “something must’ve have happened… but I don’t know what”.

And Dumb Bitch #2: You weren’t even at a marked intersection. You actually lifted your foggy gaze of non-comprehesion, away from your Prada knock-offs, looked right at the guy on the bike ahead of me, and still stepped out right in front of him! He was going a good pace. I should know I was right behind him. He skidded and dropped his bike, so as not to kill you. I went ass-over-tea-kettle trying not to kill him. The car behind us almost crushed us both.

That scraping sound that caught your attention? The only way not to slam into your Darwin-coveting ass, was for the guy to drop into baseball slide… on asphalt with nothin but a t-shirt and biking shorts. The squishy red streaks on the pavement? Yeah, that would be several dermal layers of the poor schmuck who just wanted to go home and get his dinner.

Halfway across the street, you looked back and said to the bird on a wire: “Oh, some guy just fell off his bike.” Fell of his bike? You shittin’ me? You don’t even know what you’ve wrought??? Listen, you jaywalking cunt-snap. Hate to tear you away from a profound conversation about who’s fucking who in your inbred social circle, but listen here for a sec. You stepped in front of not one, not two, but THREE fast-moving vehicles during rush hour. That “guy” just sacrificed his hide, quite literally, to save your unworthy ass. The lady in the car? Maybe her hair was already white, but you scared the shit out of her. She got so close to me that from her point of view it looked like I’d gone under her car, she was sobbing.

Everyone came running, to help - thank the gods of human decency - except you of course. So engrossed in your conversation were you, that you never clued in to the fact that you nearly died and nearly took two people with you. You walked away oblivious to the fact that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men were on their way, with screaming sirens, to try to put this poor guy back together again, and treat an old lady for shock.

Seriously, what the fuck? Do you know how many times I’ve seen pedestrians wander onto busy streets because they’ve been jabbering on the phone?

Fuck me!

2

Holy crap. I’d’ve at least screamed at her, or something. That level of cluelessness is unbelievable.

3

Well, right before the crash, the guy ahead of me was ringing his bell and bellowing “LOOKOUTLOOKOUTLOOKOUT!” But by then she was studying her shoes again and I guess it never occured to her that she was the one he was talking to.

I’m a little hazy on some of the details of the immediate aftermath because I was trying to get my own shit together. To avoid running over Road Rash Buddy, I had to throw my bike away and at one point, I distinctly remember flying through the air like Superman and thinking “Oh, this won’t be so bad, I just need to tuck and roll…”

Lemme tell ya, there was a thread the other week about bike helmets. I thank the Flying Spaghetti Moster that I had a brain bucket on my noggin today! I totally flew through the air. My score for artistic expression was 5.9, 5.9, 5.9 and 5.7 from the Russian judge (who claimed my landing was a little sloppy).

I never heard her talking myself. Her bovinely obtuse observation that “Oh, some guy just fell off his bike” was recounted to the cops by a witness. Aparently a few people were screaming at the dumb cow, but she just walked off going “Uh-huh… Uh-huh… Uh-huh…” into her phone.

4

Ugh, this happened to me a few weeks ago. Night time, I’m the only car on the road, it’s dark, and ditz on a cellphone walks out from between 2 parked cars, directly in front of me. She didn’t even notice me slam on the brakes, so I then laid on the horn. She screamed, jumped, and dropped her precious phone. Then she started screaming at me about how she’s a pedestrian and I would have had to pay for her funeral had I killed her. I did some screaming of my own. :smiley:

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Sometimes, it’s worth it.

6

That’s one of the things I screamed at her. :smiley:

7

I’ve told this story before, but I’ll reprise it here.

One day, I’m sitting on my block waiting for a parking. See a young girl come out of her house, phone Nokia brand earring, aka cell phone, pasted to the side of her head.

She starts to cross the street, goes between two cars, chattering away.

Looks up and notices a car cruising along, about 45 mph. She pulls up short, just in time.

Finishes crossing the street, goes around the corner, comes back with bag in her hand and a phone on still on her ear, crosses the street goes back into her house.

She comes back out a few minutes later.

She starts to cross the street, goes between two cars, chattering away.

Looks up and notices aNOTHER car cruising along, about 45 mph. She pulls up short, JUST IN TIME.

I think WTF! Then I think: maybe I can have her pretty Nokia brand earring, if she lathers, rinses and repeats one more time.

8

Unlikely. Me, I’d be going after her estate for the damages to my vehicle and the psychological damage her stupidity did to me when I was forced to watch her splatter all over the front of my car.
I’m losing my interest in worrying about the lives of people like this, but I have to admit that my interests and desires are purely selfish in this regard. I don’t want to be involved in their death or injury. I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to deal with it, I don’t want to have to live with it.

OTOH, I’m no longer bothered by the idea that stupid people are going to take themselves out of this world in this manner and I’m no longer interested in making the rest of us suffer in order to make it stop.

9

I recently had to slam on the brakes to avoid a kid on a horse* who rode out into the intersection. I’m fairly sure the reason he was having trouble paying attention because he was talking on his cellphone.

*Yeah, I live in a small rural town.

10

The advantage of pedestrians with cellphones over drivers with cellphones is that the peds are easier to smack across the head. Same goes for cyclists.

11

I’ve seen a couple cyclists on cellphones. I want to slap it out of their hands. The one was weaving back in forth in the cycling lane, really slowly. During rush hour this is very dangerous. Other cyclists have to go around him. Usually there’s enough room to pass on the outer edge of the lane, but weaving back and forth means other cyclists sometimes have to take evasive maneuvers into traffic.

Second and thirdly, he had less control over his bike trying to pedal uphill with only one hand on the handlebars, and his ability to brake was compromised. Idiot. If he’d had a Bluetooth or some similar hands-free Uhura device, I wouldn’t have minded so much because at least he could control his bike. He might be distracted and run into the side of a bus, but at least he’d have done so in a straight line.

I am really surprised at the number of cellphone-distracted pedestrians though. On my lunch hour the other week (I was a pedestrian too), there was a guy… walking… really… slowly… because… he… was… on…the… phone.

He waited with the rest of the herd at the crosswalk. And appeared to be looking up at the signal. Woosh! Woosh! Cars went by. Then there was a small break in the traffic. No woosh for a moment. So, still with his eyes iup and facing the signal lights that said “don’t walk”, he started to cross. Whoosh! HOOOONK! He jumped back in a hurry with the rest of the pedestrains thinking “WTF? Idiot!” He didn’t look for traffic or anything. It was like he took his cue from the pause in the wooshes only.

The hell? How does talking on a phone make a signal you’ve understood all your life suddenly become meaningless? “Red hand” or “don’t walk”: that’s one you should be able to follow without really processing it. Dumbfuck.