A Pedestrian Rant

How often has it happened to you?

If you're regularly behind the wheel of your car, you likely don't pay it much heed. Maybe
we're minor annoyances to you. Maybe we're just additional steps on the path to your very
own case of road rage. I don't know. I'm not sure if I ever want to learn.

But if you're someone who has just stepped off of a public transit bus - in Vancouver, Regina,
Ottawa, Ville de Québec, Halifax or anywhere in between - and looking to cross the street at
what ought to be a recognized crosswalk? That's when you're the one with a case of
pedestrian rage. Because that's the moment when the driver of a car coming up right behind
your bus...who has seen you stepping off the bus and positioning yourself to cross that street
to the other side...chooses to accelerate and cut you off before you can cross.

At that point, you've just had a run-in with what I call the Car-Driver Supremacist. Such a
driver, absent any evidence to the contrary, believes in their own right to get where they're
going coming before your right of way. At all times.

In my own case, it seems to happen at least twice a week on average. My stop, coming home
from my day job, is on the other side of the street from where I live. It's also long been known
as the site of a bike path and habitual crossing point in the neighbourhood. Has been such
since the neighbourhood was built, less than two decades ago. That it's at the halfway mark
of that particular street...well, I can't explain the urban planners' logic of two decades' past. I don't have the resources yet for that.

It's happened at other intersections as well. Once, after visiting either my general practitioner
or my dentist – not sure which at this late date – I had a near-miss while crossing a marked
and signal-equipped intersection. I stumbled, fell to the pavement, got up and turned
around...and got the finger from the driver on that occasion.

In spite of the fact that the “walk/don't walk” light was with me at the time.

Mull that over a moment.

It stretches the odds like Reed Richards to think that mine's the only case like this.

Pedestrian rage. It's going to be the next big thing if we're all not careful.

Maybe even if we are.