Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Open Season on Pedestrians?

I sent this to the police chief and traffic manager this morning while in an ill temper.

Good morning.

I was walking the dogs down Camino Uva this morning at about 0710 prior to going to work, and crossed S. San Ildefonso at the end of my street. There is a bench on the other side where people wait for the bus. So this (expletive deleted) in a huge Dodge pickup truck (silver, couldn't get a plate number) came barrelling down the street really fast. He was by the rental complex when I checked but came at me faster than I calculated. Never slowed down (based on engine noise, vehicle balance) and passed me while I was still in the street with about six feet clearance at high speed. My first objective at that point was to make sure the dogs were safe.

I know and I think he knows that pedestrians have the ROW crossing a street at an intersection and that drivers are supposed to obey the speed limit. I wonder if we ought to make that a marked crosswalk since we now have a bus route over there and since we can't have a patrol car everywhere at once.

At any rate, if this guy is going to threaten pedestrians with deadly force, I wonder how long it will be before a pedestrian decides to return the favor. I'm not laughing. We live in a community where we don't have to worry very much about drug dealers, hard-core criminals, or drive by shootings. We will more likely kill or injure each other by misusing motor vehicles. Our society's lax behavior towards bad driving doesn't help, either.

1 comment:

Scott said...

Khal make sure you file a formal police report in addition to your letter.

Probably nothing will be done as a result but if the motorist is a serial offender maybe they will be identified by the next victim.