Human traffic-ing
Why does city traffic turn perfectly ordinary people into murdering, suicidal IQ-deficients?
1. Yesterday, a cyclist came thisclose to running me over while I crossed an intersection. I was crossing by the green light. He was riding through a red light. (I, of course, expressed my rage disapproval both orally and through digital gesticulation. Drivers observing this while waiting for the light to change cheered my little fit display. They may also have laughed).
But, really. Bicycle riders? Evil stoopit fuckers. At least the ones in North American cities. I leave Europe and other continents out of this.
2. This was much more spectacular, even Darwin Award-worthy.
There's an intersection with a traffic light immediately next to my building. The east-west road is one of the city's main streets, and there's constant traffic. Traffic on the north-south road is sporadic, though, because the street dead-ends into the entry ramp of an office building's parking lot.
Most of the day you can semi-ignore the light if you're walking across the ramp. Just look both ways and dart across. At rush hour, however, the ramp crossing is very busy with employees driving in and out, and you've got to obey the signals.
So this morning, I take Sanji out for a walk around 8:30. Rush hour. The light at the ramp crossing is red. All the other pedestrians stop.
The Darwin nominee rushes onto the ramp and drops his briefcase - in the middle of the road, and between two southbound cars. This causes the second of the two cars to have to screech to a stop. Oblivious, Darwin squats down to pick up his briefcase. This makes him blinvisible to the northbound car that's entering the ramp. Does Darwin look to see if there's a car about to plough into him? Nooooo. That car screeched to a halt just in the nick of time. Darwin just kept on going.
All the rest of us just looked at each other. Like, how stoopit is he, man? We watched someone nearly get himself killed. Twice. In about four seconds.
I found myself wishing that he'd gotten hit by the car. Not enough to hurt him badly. Just enough to go to court. So I could testify to his complete, utter ineligibility to procreate.
Testify, sister!
1. Yesterday, a cyclist came thisclose to running me over while I crossed an intersection. I was crossing by the green light. He was riding through a red light. (I, of course, expressed my rage disapproval both orally and through digital gesticulation. Drivers observing this while waiting for the light to change cheered my little fit display. They may also have laughed).
But, really. Bicycle riders? Evil stoopit fuckers. At least the ones in North American cities. I leave Europe and other continents out of this.
2. This was much more spectacular, even Darwin Award-worthy.
There's an intersection with a traffic light immediately next to my building. The east-west road is one of the city's main streets, and there's constant traffic. Traffic on the north-south road is sporadic, though, because the street dead-ends into the entry ramp of an office building's parking lot.
Most of the day you can semi-ignore the light if you're walking across the ramp. Just look both ways and dart across. At rush hour, however, the ramp crossing is very busy with employees driving in and out, and you've got to obey the signals.
So this morning, I take Sanji out for a walk around 8:30. Rush hour. The light at the ramp crossing is red. All the other pedestrians stop.
The Darwin nominee rushes onto the ramp and drops his briefcase - in the middle of the road, and between two southbound cars. This causes the second of the two cars to have to screech to a stop. Oblivious, Darwin squats down to pick up his briefcase. This makes him blinvisible to the northbound car that's entering the ramp. Does Darwin look to see if there's a car about to plough into him? Nooooo. That car screeched to a halt just in the nick of time. Darwin just kept on going.
All the rest of us just looked at each other. Like, how stoopit is he, man? We watched someone nearly get himself killed. Twice. In about four seconds.
I found myself wishing that he'd gotten hit by the car. Not enough to hurt him badly. Just enough to go to court. So I could testify to his complete, utter ineligibility to procreate.
Testify, sister!