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If you ride the streets, there are more dangers than just potholes and cars. A single bonehead pedestrian stepping into the street without looking can ruin your day, taco your wheel and take you out big time. It’s not because you did anything wrong, it’s because they’re idiots who never learned what every kid is taught by their parents, “Look Both Ways Before Crossing The Street.”
There is another type of pedestrian that I love to hate that I don’t see on the street so much, they tend to stay on shared ped/bike paths. I call them the “Triple Threat”. They have a Starbucks in one hand that is also holding a dog on a long leash and they are using their other hand to talk on a cell phone. They must be a hardy species because they seem to be multipling. Use extreme caution when confronted with one out in the wild.
While I found most of these amusing I feel like I have to point out that several of the described scenarios wouldn’t be an issue if the cyclist wasn’t riding like an ass. The most glaring example of this is “2 – The Assumer This is the type of pedestrian that assumes that just because the cars have come to a stop it’s clear to cross the street, not considering that there might be a bike flying between the cars….” The only situation where this would be the ped’s fault is if traffic was only stopped because it was backed up through the intersection. Otherwise, the traffic would be stopping for one of those fancy red-lights or stop signs they have out there and in such an instance, the ped would have right of way.
I’m not yelling, I’m just saying.
Is it just a coincidence that my previous post has disappeared? What I mean is, does its disappearance have anything to do with the fact that it criticized the article?
Yikes. Sure, sure, now it shows up. Foot inserted firmly into mouth. My apologies.
Reminds me of motorists joking about running over cyclists…
this article could for the most part be avoided if cyclist in question acted more like cars and obeyed traffic laws. granted one or two such as the moron mother could not be avoided (hoping that the bmx absolutely had to bunny hope because even with brakes couldn’t stop). also if all bikes that were riding had brakes even fixies at least the front most of this bull shit could be avoided.
brakes or none, j-walking peds. are dangerous and scary. the same people who don’t see cyclist while driving don’t see cyclist when they are walking.
the common denominator is lack of awareness by all parties.
I wrote a blog about pedestrians back in July of ’07