Last night I was heading home in my car. I approached an intersection of two busy streets and I had the green light and left turn signal. Great. When I was about 1/2 a block from the intersection I saw a middle aged man and little girl ( daughter or granddaughter who couldn’t have been two years old yet) start crossing the street in front of me. They were crossing from left to right from my perspective and the man looked right at me. He didn’t pick up the girl and hurry across, he didn’t stop and back up to the curb, he just kept walking slowly, pushing her on.
I slowed down of course, and stopped when I reached the intersection and they were RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. I honked my horn and the man looked at me and made a “hold on” gesture and kept going, to which I responded with a “what the fuck are you doing” look, but he just kept going.
I’ve always believed that adults have the right to be stupid with their own lives and if I do something stupid and get hurt it’s my own fault, but to endanger a little kid like that just seems criminal. He didn’t know I was going to stop. I could have been a psycho and just run them both down, or somebody else could have come around from behind and not seen them.
If it had happened, legally the driver could have been held responsible, but as far as I’m concerned it would have been the father’s fault. His daughter (granddaughter) could have died and it would have been because of his stupidity. I just wish people would realize that.
Perhaps more places should be like DC? In our Nation’s Capital, IIRC, if a pedestrian is hit while jaywalking, both parties share some responsiblity. I don’t know if this would also apply to crossing against the light or if it’s just for crossing outside of a crosswalk.
The worst is the people who push baby carriages into traffic ahead of them. From between parked cars. There’s also the chaperones that lead entire school groups of jaywalkers across busy intersections. By the time kids grow up, they’ve had years of training at being a danger to themselves and others.
If he was in a marked crosswalk and there was no traffic signal prohibiting the crossing, he was (under the laws of my state) permitted to cross. State law here requires that cars stop – regardless of the situation – for a pedestrian in the crosswalk. Perhaps he misjudged the distance and thought he’d be able to cross before you arrived; in any case there was never any real danger or risk.
Besides, if you’ve already stopped, what purpose does honking at him serve? The only valid use of the horn is to warn of danger. There’s no danger here, except perhaps that you’ll go postal and decide to run them over. So, we add noise pollution to your offenses. In some places, unnecessary use of the horn is itself an offense.
Is your time so valuable that you can’t spare a few seconds of it so an old man can cross the street with his granddaughter without having to be scared or treated rudely? :rolleyes:
Nothing like getting both views.
YMMV - but my reading of the OP was that they were crossing at the intersection itself, in clear contravention of what must have been a red light for them.
I would have honked too. If only to make him think twice about doing it again.
Kelly, I honked because I was irritated, not at losing a few seconds, but at the fact that what he did was stupid and POTENTIALLY dangerous. He was crossing against the light, at an intersection where people turn the corners fairly fast, he did so after seeing me coming and, as I pointed out in the first place he had a very young child with him. There was no danger right then because I did stop, but what about the next time?
Not necessarily. Here in BC, you frequently see traffic lights in one direction, with stop signs in the other.
And if a guy at the stop sign decides to “claim the road” by going through one lane at a time, even if perpendicular traffic has a green light, he’s got the right of way.
Still a stupid git though.
In Berkeley, CA, people jaywalk in herds around the UC campus. It’s incredibly annoying. Sometimes people will even stop in the middle of the street and have a conversation.
Nothing like setting a good example for the kids 
Here’s one: two guys in some Iowa town were crossing a street when they were hit by a vehicle. The two pedestrians were deterimned to be at fault and were billed $41 each because the accident had shut down the intersection.