The city where I live has a main thoroughfare that at one point is 6 lanes in each direction. Earlier today, a young woman almost sideswiped me, and I turned to look at her, at which point she honked, slowed down a bit, and they cut across 3 lanes of traffic right behind me and then sped off. No big surprise that her car was not all that old, but still covered with dents. :smack:
Tonight, in fact. Portland has bad street lighting, but the bigger problem is the idiots who live here and refuse to wear reflective clothing or carry a small light when out at night. The ones tonight had neither, and it was raining and very dark and they walked right out in front of me. Makes me homicidal.
There was, and probably still is, a problem on a stretch of road in Colonie, NY where people would jaywalk across the street at night from the sketchy motels to the grocery store. Several people were killed, despite their being an actual stop light with pedestrian controls just a few hundred feet away at most. I’ve never understood why I should feel any sympathy for anybody who shows so little care about their own life. I feel bad for the poor person who hit you and now has to live with that.
A couple of years ago I turned from a main road onto my street, which involves crossing a small service road with stop signs giving right of way to my street.
I nearly ran over a moron on a bicycle who ran through the stop sign and then gave me the finger.
I regret to report that I didn’t increase the average IQ by turning down the service road and running the fucker over. But he deserved it.
Not me, but when I was in New York I saw a woman pushing a baby carriage across the street against the light, studiously avoiding looking to see if any traffic was coming. I have no idea if she was the mother or a nanny. A cab did stop for her, showing they don’t make cabbies the way they used to.
Not one particular incident, but it happens quite a lot when I’m driving in to work before sunrise. I see something white moving low across the road some distance ahead. It could be a plastic bag or a newspaper blowing around in the wind, but it might be a cat, so I slow down. Occasionally, it is a plastic bag or someone’s pet, but more often than not, it’s a person, a jogger or a kid going to catch the schoolbus, dressed in dark clothes with white sneakers–only the sneakers are visible until the car is close enough to catch them in the headlights.
This was a while ago, but it still slightly boggles me.
Driving home, my commute went down a side road that a fairly major city street. The junction was light controlled, with pedestrian crossings on all four ways. I had a green light, and had just pulled out into the major road when a couple sauntered out into the road, trailed by their toddler, who was maybe 2.5 years old, munching on some snack and paying as much attention to the road as you’d expect from a distracted toddler. When I say into the road, I mean across the road I was heading into, without so much as glancing around to check if there was a car coming.
I had to swerve around the kid (slowly), because my green light only lasted a few seconds, and I was in the middle of the main junction, blocking it.
They didn’t even glance in my direction until I was within 2 feet of the toddler, and that was all they did.
I have never felt more tempted to kidnap a child.
That street was incredible for suicidal (and infanticidal) pedestrians though, a bus driver once told me that a woman a few stops down, instead of hailing the bus by sticking a hand out, shoved her occupied stroller into the road in front of the bus to make him stop, then calmly got on.
Nighttime a couple of weeks ago, I signaled right to park at the head of a line of cars when the light turned red. I was stopped behind a few other cars, next to the parked car I would pull in front of. When the light turned green and traffic started to move, I began turning and a skateboarder came to a pinch point between me and the parked car. Separated from his board but no injuries. He didn’t say a word to me, but he was probably a split second from serious injury.
2 incidents of note but no fatalities - both today.
First up, I had to stop to allow the 2 labs frisking in the roadway to avoid death. They also wanted to climb in my window and say hello. They needed to run about in circles in traffic, and generally act like untrained clowns. Perfectly sweet dogs, I am sure. Their owner finally showed up, eventually got one loaded into the car (it jumped in and out repeatedly) and then grabbed the other one and shoved it into the front seat. She was walking them off leash and they took off to play in traffic. Idjit.
Second incident involved me almost taking out a woman walking down the yellow divider line straight at me. She was treating the center line like a sidewalk on a very busy road by the shopping center. She seemed rather irritated that we were interrupting her evening walk.
Does a shopping cart count? Yesterday at Target, I had no fewer than three people walk directly into the path of my cart while staring at their phones and not watching where they were going. A loud “excuse me!” was barely enough to make them look up from whatever fascinating thing was on the screen in front of their face.
If that doesn’t count then I’ll go with the elderly asshat in a pickup truck who rolled right through a right turn on red while I was making my left turn on a green arrow.
How about an unsecured backup generator in the back of a pick-up deciding to fly and be free on the expressway? Does that count? It gleefully bounced its way to the median right in front of me. I and my car were unscathed. One second later and maybe I would be dead now.
A couple months ago I nearly hit someone, but I’m pretty sure I was the moron.
I was turning left onto a highway on-ramp, at an intersection with a fair amount of traffic. I was primarily watching for oncoming traffic, and when I finally got an opening, I accelerated to turn–
–and only then noticed the older guy in the middle of the unmarked crosswalk across the on-ramp. He saw me and did this amazing terrified jig while I slammed on my brakes, then shot me a death-glare as he continued across the intersection.
He wasn’t wearing all-black; instead, he wore a bluish-gray jogging suit that somehow matched the color of early-morning asphalt exactly.
Woke me up, that’s for sure, and I’m sure he woke up, too. I hate being the moron, but at least nobody was hurt.
If you want to see morons you’ll come close to hitting on their bikes, go to Pacific Ave in Santa Cruz. You’re guaranteed to have some idiot cyclist cut in front of you or zoom past you on your right (in your right blind spot, to be precise), and he’ll blame you for nearly hitting him on his bike (never mind the fact that he’s probably stoned).
Someone designed a crosswalk to cut across an on ramp?? Someone is a moron but it’s not you or the guy on the crosswalk.
I had three cases of “the moron on the left” in a single Saturday morning.
The moron on the left is that guy who’s part of a badly-organized group of cyclists, in fact the one furthest into the road, and who keeps weaving in and out while pointing out landscape features.
After just one of those, when I see a group that actually rides double-line as our road code indicates they should I want to stop the car and thank them. After three I was having to remind myself that internet service is real bad in prison.
Can we count the coyote running down the middle of the street on my way to work last week?
Depends, how many legs?
Last week. It was raining and perfect for hydroplaning and my lane was going about 40 miles and hour and the lane next to me was stopped. Dumbass pulls out of her lane without signalling right in front of me and instead of speeding up into the flow of traffic goes barely 5 miles an hour if that. Nearly took her out.