• TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
    Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
    Join free Log in
    Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.

Look both ways WHILE crossing!

#21
sarcastro83 said:
Thing that kills me the most that I see every day? People who bike with their iPods on. Especially when they're wearing those huge, noise-cancelling headphones... just seems really, really stupid to me.
Click to expand...

I bike with my iPod on. That being said, I look carefully before I cross a street and stick primarily to sidewalks. The one time I was hit by a car while riding my bike, my iPod was off. The car was speeding up the berm to make an illegal right turn and nailed me (ouch) :scowl:. That being said, no serious damage, and the driver was nice enough to give me and my bike a ride home.
 
#22
Yakob said:
I bike with my iPod on. That being said, I look carefully before I cross a street and stick primarily to sidewalks. The one time I was hit by a car while riding my bike, my iPod was off. The car was speeding up the berm to make an illegal right turn and nailed me (ouch) :scowl:. That being said, no serious damage, and the driver was nice enough to give me and my bike a ride home.
Click to expand...

+1
I've ridden a bike to school for the last 6-7 years and the majority of that time with an mp-3 player on. Despite cycling through a busy city with some crazily poor designed roundabouts/intersections (such as bicyclists literally appearing out of nowhere from a dark tunnel onto a roundabout... luckily there's a hospital 20 yards away from it!) i've never came close to having an accident, simply because i kept the volume down and kept looking around to what was happening.
 
#23
Last year I almost plowed over a teen girl with my van in a 35MPH zone. She was talking on her cell phone and just walked right into the street in front of me without even looking. Lucky for her, her boyfriend was walking alongside her and grabbed her by the back of her shirt and yanked her back to the curb. She landed flat on her back and she may even have gotten hurt but at least she is alive.

Darwin sometimes favors pretty girls who may be less than smart by giving them attentive boyfriends. :D
 
#25
rarisgod said:
In addition to this, why is it illegal for cyclists to use the sidewalk? Cyclists on the road are some of the most dangerous things I've encountered. It's dangerous for them, but also for those of us who have to avoid them.
Click to expand...

It is FAR more dangerous to cycle on the sidewalk than it is to cycle competently in the street. Of course, the key word there is "competently."
 
#27
I was in India a few years ago (very crazy drivers). There is no concept of "pedestrian right of way" there. At first I thought that was a bad thing, but the more I thought about it , the more I thought that the idea "a car hitting you will crush you. It's your own damn responsibility to not get in the way of an oncoming car" was a pretty good idea.
 
#28
Unrepresented said:
The city of Berkeley gives pedestrians the right of way, and the pedestrians take it very seriously. Cars are expected to stop anytime a pedestrian enters a crosswalk. Scared the crap out of me on my last trip up there to watch pedestrians have the law at their back but clearly not the size advantage to back it up should a driver not see them with adequate time to safely stop.

I don't think I'd ever be able to casually walk out into a busy street with enough faith in my fellow motorists to presume they'll do the right thing.
Click to expand...

I noticed this in Los Angeles too. A woman marched right into a crosswalk on Santa Monica Boulevard, with several cars bearing down, just expecting them to stop. One drove in front of her, and she yelled, to me, "Can you believe how crazy he is?" I said, "I'm from New York. I can't believe you'd just walk out into the street expecting someone to stop." (I've since learned that Philly is even worse than N.Y.C., because red lights don't mean nearly as much here.) The coasts are definitely different on this issue.
 
#31
shadowtippy said:
We have the idiots here that walk in the street, not crossing it, but in it. That annoys the heck out of me, especially when there is a sidewalk on either side of the street specificly made for pedestrian traffic. It should be legal (and encouraged) to run these people over with your car.
Click to expand...

I live in Newark...

I swear people in this city want to get hit. All times of the day and night, stepping out into traffic without looking, walking slow as hell just to make you wait, running across busy 4 lane roads in rush hour, walking down the middle of the road.

Don't even get me started on the double and triple parkers or the people who think they can jump the left after 2 other people have already jumped the left.
 
#32
bass12 said:
I've been noticing more and more that people don't seem to look to the left and right while crossing the street. Worse than this is that an alarming number of people will be busy talking on the phone or texting while they cross, seemingly oblivious to the cars around them. Given how many drivers are equally blasé about their road habits, this apparent disregard for safety is astonishing to me. When I was growing up we were taught very early on to look both ways both before we crossed the street and WHILE we were crossing. It seems that a lot of people today simply figure that because cars should stop for pedestrians they will. Any thoughts on the matter?
Click to expand...

I run these ZOMBIES over....
 
#33
Im driving slowly through the parking lot at church, this dude is texting, head down, walking cluelessly there's a car approaching and he's going real slow...im like...wanting to yell GET THE ***** OUT OF MY WAY!!

then theres dopes with ipod earphones while driving...and these laws banning text & cell while driving dont do anything. I see it aaaaaaaalllllll the time still
 
#34
People here(downtown mostly) just go when the crosswalk sign turns and we have cars AND trains that turn against the red on both left and right turns in addition to the public transit trains that run on street level that people blow off as if its nothing larger than a bicycle. My point in case:
Sacramento_Light_Rail_Crash.jpg
 
#35
Buslady7803 said:
...and these laws banning text & cell while driving dont do anything. I see it aaaaaaaalllllll the time still
Click to expand...

Same thing here in Montreal. I sometimes wonder if the police have pulled anyone over since the anti-hand-held phone law was implemented roughly a year ago. My car once got hit by a guy running a red light while on a cell phone. I saw the guy coming soon enough to speed up and it's lucky I did - otherwise the passenger-side door (where my then-girlfriend was sitting) might have been hit instead of the rear wheel section of the car. Driving a car isn't a joke: that big hunk of metal is capable of doing a lot of damage.
 

Latest posts

Top Bottom
Back