It's your life, but what about the poor person who hits and kills you???

The BBQ Pit
1

Or the person who wrecks his/her car trying to avoid hitting you? (hint to such a driver: Don’t. This person needs to be removed from the gene pool. You’ll be doing EVERYONE a favor. Really.).

Scenario: semi major road (main roadway through a very populous subdivision). 4 lanes (2 each way). Lots of cross streets. Posted speed limit is 35, which is taken as more of a joke than a law. Lots of curves. Even crossing this road on foot is slightly risky.

Sidewalk along the entire road, though just on one side. Grassy area on the other side.

Joggers, not surprisingly, enjoy jogging along the road.

Most of them, however, actually go on the sidewalk or AT LEAST on the grassy area.

Not so the FUCKING MORON we saw 15 minutes ago.

She was on the roadway.

Sure, she was going in the direction facing traffic, which we’ve all been told is safer because you can see what’s coming at you and get out of the way.

But WHY??? She was, quite literally, 3 feet away from the edge of the road. The sidewalk was another 2 feet away from there.

Yes, she was 5 feet away from near-perfect safety.

Yet, she chose to run ON THE ROAD. Forcing cars going that way to have to swerve to avoid her.

She could have been on the shoulder, except there IS no shoulder on that roadway. Presumably, the road builders assumed that walkers could, yanno, use the SIDEWALK.

In summary: If you’re going to be THAT stupid and commit suicide, PLEASE don’t force a total stranger to do the deed. Have the guts to do it in an honest manner.

2

In most jurisdictions, if there is a sidewalk which is safe to run on, they are violating the law. Call the cops on them.

3

In the past I’ve heard runners state that they prefer running on the road instead of the sidewalk, because they’d rather run on asphalt than concrete.

But if that’s the case, I would still think they’re stupid to run on a busy four-lane road, especially a curvy road where presumably there’s less visibility for oncoming cars to see you and have time to avoid hitting you. If you absolutely insist on running on asphalt, find a side street with very little traffic.

4

Someone needs to buy her a freaking treadmill.

5

To take up the OP’s point - what about the poor person who hits and kills you???

Years ago I was visiting my mother in Canberra. The original homes built there had coke/wood fired heating systems. My parents had replaced theirs but the young couple next door hadn’t.

While I was there I often saw the woman next door. She would sit on the porch and watch her son play in the garden, obviously worried about the traffic. But there was little of that, once in a while a car would drive past. I never spoke to her, or learned their names, but they were smiling, happy people and we would wave hello.

One morning my mother and I were sitting drinking tea and the woman next door screamed. And screamed. And couldn’t stop screaming. And I was out the door and in their back yard before I could think what I was doing. And what I found was an hysterical mother, an hysterical truck driver and the body of a pre-school child under the truck.

What had happened was, the truck had arrived delivering the fuel. the mother put the child inside to unlock the side gate, forgetting that the back door was unlocked and the child ran under the truck. He was run over by a truck in his own back yard.

Anyway, the truck driver never drove again. He was depressed and sought counselling. I know at one time he was considered suicidal but last I heard he was still around.

This may be hard to understand but, the thing I most remember from the whole experience is not crawling under the truck to check the crushed skull of the dead child, but the look of utter desolation on the truck driver’s face.

Strangely I just realized that I got scripts from one of the doctors there for the mother, but the poor driver had to do it cold turkey.

6

How am I supposed to have a happy Memorial Day after reading that?

7

The answer is simple, jogging kills brain cells.
:smiley:

8

I almost killed a highway worker when he ran out after his hardhat without looking when I was about 20 - that lesson has stayed with me for all my driving years. I never want to hurt anything with my car.

don’t ask, I live on a fairly busy residential street here, and we have a family with a small child across the street. I do a lot of yardwork out front, and I don’t know how many times last summer I looked across the street and saw that kid playing a couple of feet away from the road (not in his fenced yard). I’m afraid that someday I’m going to hear the screech and screaming, too.

9

This is why you should buy life insurance. If a poor person hits and kills you, he/she was likely unable to afford good insurance or have any assets. Your family will thank you for taking care of their needs.

10

This is an argument my husband makes about a certain sect of Amish. We live just north of the largest Amish community in the world. It’s hilly in Amish country, and curvy, and when you’re driving there, especially at night, you take corners carefully and come up over the tops of hills slowly, if you have any sense.

The make and, for lack of a better word, adornment of a buggy is dictated by the bishop of the church the family attends (some are enclosed, for instance, and other churches forbid enclosure). Most buggies have those big orange reflective triangles on them, and some even have lights that are run off power generated from the buggy wheels. There is one sect, however, that is forbidden to have any reflective tape or other adornment on their buggies. Sometimes they have an oil lamp swinging from one front corner of the buggy, which does very little to notify you if you’re approaching from behind. They maintain that “adorning” the buggy with reflective tape is against their religion, and that they are risking only themselves, because they would never sue if anyone was killed. Fine.

But, as you say: what about the poor person who hits and kills you? It’s terrifying.

11

Yes. I’m a runner, and I’d rather run on asphalt than concrete. A little easier of an impact, or so I tell myself; plus, you don’t have to deal with the change in level surface every time you hit a driveway, or have to run around parked cars if they stick out into the sidewalk from the driveway.

Yes, again. I don’t run on dangerous roads. Most of my running on the street is in my development, early in the morning, when I can run an entire hour sometimes without seeing a moving car. If it’s a busy street I happen to be on (when traveling), I run on the sidewalk. If there’s no sidewalk, I won’t run outside if it’s dangerous.

I am very careful driving around runners, but I am amazed sometimes how much trust some runners place in drivers. I see runners on roads sometimes where hundreds of cars pass every few minutes, on roads with narrow or no shoulders. They are betting that every single driver sees them, doesn’t swerve, etc. Not a safe bet.

12

Maybe they subconsciously hate running so much that they’re trying to get put in a hospital bed for 8 to 12 months.

13

Jeez, quite a story to read out of the blue. A friend of my brother backed his car into a garbage truck driver early one morning, paralyzing him from the waist down (as I recall), and putting the former into a pretty deep funk for a while. I can’t imagine how it would feel to kill a young child that way.

14

Not the case here - the sidewalk is actually an asphalt-y walking path. I walk vs. run so I don’t think it makes a difference for me, but I presume that’d be similar to the road surface. So this dumb broad had no excuse.

Stratocaster, clearly you’ve got a hell of a lot more sense than the person I saw. I understand running on residential streets. This road was DEFINITELY not residential: it connects a lot of separate tiny sub-subdivisions, as well as a large shopping area. While it’s not super, super busy, in many ways that makes it worse because cars will be going faster.

15

Just putting in a word about people who choose to commit suicide by jumping out in front of a car or train.

Look, jackass, you wanna die, fine. Don’t bring other people into it.

16

But all the good ways to die involve other people. A parachute not opening; you need a pilot. Getting caught in the gears of a combine; you need a farmer. Having your nuts bit off by a Laplander, well, that one’s obvious.

17

Honestly, any means of committing suicide is gonna be a bitch for whoever has to clean up after you. Unless you buy yourself a burial plot in advance, dig your own grave, and rig up some sort of Rube Goldberg machine to cover yourself with earth after you fling yourself into the grave.

18

This is true, but at least those who clean up after a suicide don’t have to feel guilty that they killed someone.

Actually, I’ve read about some suicides being extra thoughtful of those who will find them. They leave all their papers with explanations well organized in a prominent place. They cover themselves with plastic to cut down on splatter. One guy even left out coffee and donuts for the cops to find.

19

A young child (6ish, IIRC) was killed near my parent’s house when he rode his new bike down the driveway and under the wheels of the garbage truck one Christmas morning. The local rumour mill says the truck driver later committed suicide.

20

My father-in-law, the city bus driver, won’t move over to the commuter train side because they are told that you are guaranteed to kill at least one person with the train in your career. People are so stupid about trains (it takes a city block or so to stop a train), plus the ones who jump out on purpose.