moonlog

Crosswalk Rage

[Warning: Somebody’s got a case of the Mondays.]

I was having a bad day Saturday, so I decided to get some air and exercise by biking to the supermarket to buy some crab meat for crab cakes.

In the suburbs, I have pretty much given up on vehicular cycling. Too many antagonistic drivers and I really don’t care if I’m legally in the right anymore. Plus, I was in a really bad mood and I don’t like to drive or bike on the streets if I have big things on my mind.

I tried Trader Joe’s first because it’s the closest, but they don’t carry crab, so I began a trek “across the street” to get to the local chain supermarket. Across the street in the suburbs means you have to cross an interchange designed to accommodate the priority of motorists to never slow down at the expense of pedestrians’ safety.

I’m biking in pedestrian mode, which means I stick to sidewalks, crosswalks, and I always press the button and wait for the signal. Twenty minutes later, I’m across the street! One more minor intersection to go.

I press the button, wait for the walk signal, slowly cross to the middle of the street, wait for cars coming from behind me who are turning left on green to graciously let me finish my crosswalk.

One finally does, and mentally I thank him. But I’m distracted by looking behind me, and a car from the opposite direction wanting to turn right (onto me) stops a few feet in front of me and sits on his horn.

At first I’m just shocked. It’s one thing to almost hit me in a crosswalk when I have a walk signal. But you’re gonna sit there and honk at me? I get out of his way and flick him off.

He pulls around the shopping center parking lot, gets out of his car, and waves me over. At the point I’m really perturbed, but if he wants to have a discussion about how he doesn’t know right-of-way rules, LET’S HAVE IT. This is basically where I went wrong.

I walk over, and he immediately lectures me about how he had a green light and that I have to follow a “pedestrian rules” even though I’m on a bicycle.

I told him couple times that I had a crosswalk, I had a walk signal, and that a green light does not mean he can turn without yielding to people in the crosswalk.

I got the feeling this guy’s first language wasn’t English, he didn’t seem (or want) to understand words like “yield” and “right of way,” and that he genuinely thought his green light meant he could turn without yielding. But when he kept insisting that I needed to be more careful and obey traffic rules, I kinda just lost it with him. The reason I have to be more careful is because ASSHOLES like you don’t know basic traffic rules.

I was already pre-agitated at the time, so it didn’t take much for me to lose patience. What was running through my mind at the time — and what I should have done — was brought him over to the intersection and showed him how a crosswalk works. Drivers can’t see crosswalk signals if they come from the opposite direction like he did. Drivers in the suburbs almost never walk anywhere, so they don’t really know what walking is like. And this situation is precisely why motorists are required to yield when turning. Hey mister, why do you think the signal gave me the walk sign if you had right of way? Because you didn’t.

I’d like to say that when I’m in a better mood, I have a lot of sympathy for this guy. All the roads in post-1970s suburbia are designed so that motorists have to think and react as little as possible. The most people know about actual traffic rules is from the brief cramming before the DMV’s multiple choice test — assuming they didn’t skip the test by transferring their old jurisdiction’s license. Most people are indoctrinated by freeway culture and suburban interchanges.

As I’m mulling over a meager selection of crab, I wax frustration and regret — I could have handled that situation better. I could have not lost my temper and now we have another ignorant driver out there who thinks green means go anywhere he wants at an intersection and he probably thinks bicyclists are scofflaws.

On my way home, I get on the road for one intersection that is so badly designed there is no way whatsoever for nonmotorized traffic to get to the sidewalk on the opposite side. But when I’m back in pedestrian mode I do approach two more crosswalks on freeway access ramps, and much to my surprise, two motorists actually yielded without any prompting whatsoever.

Technically they are supposed to, but it’s still such a rare observation that I feel like they’re going out of their way to hold a door open for me. Maybe there’s hope after all.