All I can tell you is you just don’t understand Boston transportation.
Jaywalking. Admittedly, part of the problem is impatience. But realize crossing a busy street in Boston is *never * safe. And what safety there is doesn’t come from signage, it comes from having overwhelming force. What protects your ass on a busy street is sheer numbers and an ability to guage the velocity and sobriety of the cars coming at you. Having a walk sign in your favor is only a small help - in that you’ll probably get more damages when you file your lawsuit. In fact, the one time I nearly got killed as a pedestrian at an intersection was while studiously obeying the law - a car trying to beat a red plowed into a group of us patiently waiting for our walk signal. A girl three feet from me ended up with half her head turned to meat. So the safest strategy is to get across quickly and the only relatively safe time to do it is when oncoming cars are going slowly enough that they’d have to accelerate to hit you, and there’s so many pedestrians (a gaggle) that cars can’t ignore you and accelerate anyway. It is always unsafe to cross an intersection alone, so when the group moves, you move.
The T. Move to the back on a crowded train? Fuck no. If you let the drivers sardine can the train and force you to the very back, when your stop comes you will have to chisel your way through a solid mass of human tissue to get out. I’ve been trapped a number of times by falling for that. My goal on a crowded train is now one thing and one thing only - stay near the door. Also, the more crowded the train, the more likely that the T has fucked up and has two trains in a row, with the one right behind you completely empty. Happens all the time.
At least more than 50% of the drivers there are sober. I’m from New Jersey, where assholery on the highways is the state pasttime. Here in northern NM, the state pasttime is driving while completely fucking smashed.
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I’d normally try to claim that I hate to be pedantic. Stop laughing. Really, I have been able to make some poor saps believe that, too. But you know me too well for that.
In point of fact, the traffic laws in Massachusetts, and I believe the rest of the nation, are written so that the pedestrian always has the right of way.
This doesn’t mean that the behavior you’re pitting isn’t stupid, dangerous, and self-centered in the extreme. Just that the law is on their side.
(BTW, if you think Bostonians are bad for slack-jawed idiocies around cars, do not try driving in Orlando. Between the tourists who think that all laws are repealed in their benefit, and the geezer-types who have trouble noticing they’re outside, it’s even worse than Boston’s pedestrian traffic.)
I was heading into town yesterday, a traffic police car was about two hundred meters behind me. I entered a traffic circle, imagine my surprise to find a white Toyota coming right at me. Imagine my interjections.
In any case, I continued on. As I left the traffic circle, I noted the police car still behind me. After all a car going the wrong way in a traffic circle is no reason to stop and write a ticket.
As loopydude pointed out; the only way to survive in Boston is to get your attitude organized. It takes a bit of time to develop the proper one. I’ve lived in Boston (Allston in fact :p) and then moved out and around the city for subsequent years. Whenever I needed to venture into the city I had to readjust my attitude in order to survive - the last couple of miles on 93 south (especially when it was still all above ground) usually sufficed. As far as being a pedestrian or T rider, well uglybeech stated it perfectly.
Getting around Boston is a competitive sport but it sure ain’t a team sport.
BTW, now that I drive in the UK, Boston is easy peasy. Except for a certain level of courtesy that UK drivers practice (but only outside of London) and that needs to be ignored in Boston, I can now out attitude any pathetic little Boston commuter. Heh!
I do the same thing all the time when i’m stepping onto a crosswalk where both the law and common understanding suggest that i have the right of way. What annoyed me was the number of people in Boston who do it in complete contradiction of the traffic signals, when the cars actually had the green light and often were bearing down on the intersection at quite a rate of knots. To simply step out into the road, in front of cars travelling around 30 miles per hour, when the drivers of those cars can see a green light and believe that they will have an unimpeded passage, seems to me the height of stupidity.
I suspected that this might be the case, as it is in many other states. But even in places where the pedestrian does always have the right of way, it’s still, as you noted, pretty fucking dumb to assume that this means that you can just saunter onto the road without paying any attention to what you’re doing. Furthermore, as jayjay noted earlier in the thread, being right and being dead are not mutually exclusive options, and being right isn’t much consolation when they’re nailing the coffin shut.
And even if the law says that pedestrians always have the right of way, rules also state that pedestrians are meant to obey lights and signs at crosswalks and intersections.
Also, even in places where pedestrians officially have right of way, police often decline to prosecute the driver if it is clear that the accident was caused by a pedestrian simply stepping onto the road in contravention of traffic signals. If the police conclude that the driver was following the general traffic rules (i.e., not speeding, drunk driving, etc.) and had no opportunity to avoid the pedestrian, then the driver probably won’t be charged with anything.
I considered this too, but your theory is blown out of the water by the fact that many of the morons who refuse to move inside the train were travelling all the way into the city, to the underground stations, where ALL the train doors open and getting out is a relatively easy task from anywhere in the car. And it also happened on outbound trains, where again all doors are opened and struggling to the front of the car is not necesary in order to alight.
Furthermore, i never once saw a person miss their stop, with the drivers always holding the boarding passengers up until everyone had left the train. And this process was slowed considerably by the fact that those disembarking passengers had to squeeze through a crush at the front of the car, whereas if everyone had moved inside, there might actually have been an aisle down the center of the car for people to walk down, thus facilitating the offloading process.
I grew up in a suburb, where it was long instilled in me that CARS RULE. Nothing was to impede their progress. In the whole town there were exactly two stop lights and they were the only places with marked crosswalks. For a pedestrian, crossing a road meant waiting, waiting, waiting, looking both ways about five times each, and then scuttling like mad when you think there is finally a gap big enough to make it to the far side.
And then I went on a trip to NYC. WHOOOOOOOO. Instead of being the only walker vs. an unending string of cars, I WAS IN THE MAJORITY! We, the pedestrian herd, RULED. Fifty, a hundred strong, we strolled in clumps from one side to the other, with cars impotently waiting on our majestic passage.
It was wonderful. So that was this ‘empowered’ thing psychologists were talking about? Gimme more!
ahem.
Anyway, I’ve not done much walking in Boston, but I bet at least some of the attitude of the pedestrians there come form exactly the same sensation. Everywhere else walkers are the must be obedient to the rules set up to benefit the Lords of the Road, but in the hearts of big cities THE PEONS RULE. Ha!
As to jaywalking, I’ve rarely seen the behavior descibed in the OP. Most pedestrians cross not with the light, but in a manner that enables them to a) move, and b) not die. As has been pointed out, it’s not as if the drivers here are law-abiding saints. Lights mean nothing. I’ve nearly been hit a number of times when crossing with the light. Do I jaywalk? Yes, but I never dart out in front of cars that might hit me. I wait for long breaks in the traffic, then I move quickly to the other side, in a way that I hope will not impede the flow of traffic. Most other pedestrians I see do likewise. Are there a few asshole pedestrians? Sure, but they are by far in the minority. The concept that all pedestrians are foolish assholes and all drivers are law-abiding saints is laughable myth.
As to the T and laughable myths, what is the OP on about? It’s been my experience that most people will move into the center of the trains when asked to do so, or at least move aside. The only times I’ve had trouble getting onto a train were when the entire train was packed to the gills. If there is ever any available space to be had, I’ll get to it with little ado. The OP would have us believe that the normal state of trains is that there is a massed mob of linebackers blocking every door, and vast prairie lands, where the buffalo roam, in the middle. That’s just not so.
Of course, my lack of experience in this city might belie my post. After all, I’ve only lived here for 25 years.
My experience is that a lot of pedestrians do not care at all about traffic. I’ve had people walk out in front of me at a green light (not one that has just changed to green, either) without looking in any direction, on the assumption, I suppose that either everything will stop for them, or else that they live a charmed life. Jaywalkers in the middle of the block are common. Pedestrians and bicycles, in general, do not respect any law.
Of course, the drivers are as bad, if not worse. One of the first pieces of advice I got in Boston was “look both ways when crossing a One-Way street”. It was good advice. People will drive where, technically, there is no road – they’ll cross over barriers and zebra-striped areas. They’ll drive for miles in the breakdown lane. They’ll go through lights.
Of course, the roads are pretty screwed up too. Most towns near Boston only have one street sign up at an intersection, the theory being, I guess, that you already know which one you’re on. Road numbers change, or routes get re-routed. Street names and numbers change as you cross town boundaries, although nothing will tell you this. Everybody knows "Route 128 is the (former) high-tech road encircling the city, but the street signs don’t tell you that it’s 128 – they all call it Interstate 95 (until just before you get on – then there’s an apologetic sign telling you that 128 is 95. Although, technically, it isn’t).
So pedestrians, cyclists, drivers, and roads are all inhospitable and don’t follow the rules.
I must say, though, that I’ve found bus and subway riders to be pretty well behaved, for the most part. In my experience, they do move in.
I drove a truck for 5 years making inner city deliveries. I drove a cab in Philadelphia. I’ve logged thousands of miles all over the country on my motorcycle. Some OK credentials, yes?
On my motorcycle the only place I’ve ever been where I felt the hairs on the back of my neck standing up and a little voice telling me this is not a good day to die is when I was motoring in Boston.
Fuck that. A small fantasy is to convert my throttle to the left side is to keep my right hand free so I can bitch slap the stupid bicyclists. Not all of them, just the ones who deserve it.
I never made any such claims. In fact, i simply pointed out that my experience was with pedestrians, not with cars. I’m fully willing to concede that Boston drivers are, or may be, even worse than pedestrians.
As someone who is much more frequently a pedestrian than a driver, i’m fully willing to believe any awful tales you want to tell me about drivers, because i believe that plenty of them are just as stupid and inconsiderate as the pedestrians i have described.
Well, i won’t gainsay your experience if you will agree not to imply that i’m lying.
Of the times that i did catch the T, on multiple occasions it was, in fact, the case that the front of the carriage contained a “massed mob” while the back of the carriage was relatively free of people. Furthermore, your assertions notwithstanding, my wife and i watched incredulously on multiple occasions as large groups of standers continuously ignored the pleas of the driver to move further inside the carriage. Contrary to your implication, i’m not simply making this up in order to take a jab at Boston. I happen to love the city, and the people i actually met and spoke to there were all very nice. I am simply describing the experience i had there.
Which, of course, makes it completely impossible that my experience might have some basis in reality. :rolleyes:
Oh, the T scheduling/timing sucks ass, no doubt. Someday I shall compose my Pit magnum opus: Stuck in the tunnel between JFK and Andrew for an hour: why I am moving the FUCK out of Boston ASAP.
But I’ve never been unable to get out of the car at my stop, no matter how sardine-can like it was.
I rode the buses a couple of times, and the bus passengers were generally fine.
It was mainly on the T, on the green line (usually the “B” train) that the crowding and refusing to move in happened. It could be that this line is not typical of all the T lines, and/or that my initial theory about the main culprits being college students was correct.
