10 Types of Pedestrians We Love to Hate (continued)

6 - The Friday Night Drunk Frat Boy While these morons aren’t much different than the Ghetto Trash guys, the difference is that they purposely try to scare you off of your bike as you ride by, screaming or yelling very loudly as you pass, thrusting themselves close to you to try and make you lose your balance, thinking how “funny” that would be in their drunken brainlessness. Though they did pass their high school physics class as they somehow made it to college, they seem to define how bad our educational system is, as they too are clueless as to the effects of being hit by a moving object at speed. Alpha Kappa Roadkill!

7 - The Worthless Parent These are people who should never ever have had kids, as they are useless as guardians to their children. These are the kinds of people that will hold the child’s hand to supposedly protect them, but will completely ignore the dangers of the road, dragging their kids into the streets without any concern for their safety, without looking where they’re going, literally gambling with their child’s lives. An adult pedestrian will usually survive a hit from a 150-200 lb. rider traveling at 15-20mph, albeit bruised, battered, and bleeding. But if a child gets hit, the results could be fatal. Use birth control damn it!

8 - The Stupid Mother and the Baby Carriage This is where seemingly intelligent people sometimes do incredibly dumb things. This is where a mother will push their baby stroller between parked cars right into the street without comprehending that the stroller will stick out into the flow of traffic. Though not very common, when it happens, all involved will never forget. This occurred to me once while I was riding my BMX bike, and if it wasn’t for my quick reflexes and bunnyhop skills, I probably would’ve killed the kid upon impact. The stroller came out of nowhere, thrust into my path, where I had no where to go but up, jumping the stroller, and barely missing the kid’s head. I was so shook up by the experience I flipped out, berating the mother so badly that it brought her to tears. Hopefully the woman learned her lesson, but I’ll never forget that kids wide eyes looking up at me about to slam into him like a freight train. Childhood trauma!

9 - The Crosswalk Lemmings If there’s one idiot, there are probably more following. This is all too common at intersections where one pedestrian decides to cross the street, even though it’s not clear, and the other pedestrians standing at the corner behind them blindly follow, assuming that if the person in the front is crossing it must be safe. Wrong! So now you don’t just have one target, you have a wall of lemmings to slam into. Roadkill herd!

10 - The Magnetic Man It sounds like some sort of Superhero, but heroic isn’t exactly the correct description. These are the types of people that when both yourself and they are traveling towards each other, make seemingly absurd choices of avoidance. You clearly veer to one side to give them room, and instead of them veering to the opposite side, they for some odd reason veer towards your direction, as if they’re a magnet and you’re steel. One wonders at the psychology of making such a wrong decision when it’s so obvious what the correct choice would’ve been. They only have two possible choices; one is life, the other death. It doesn’t get easier than that. But alas, beware of The Magnetic Man. Opposites attract.