Sculpin

So I’m walking down Roosevelt near 82nd today, and I see a little fenderbender.

There was a woman in a light-colored shirt with a black lab by her side about to cross the street at the corner. I happened to be watching her, because I was admiring how well-behaved the dog was, so I saw her look both ways (apparently she’s well-behaved, too) and as I passed her at the corner I saw her begin to cross.

There was a car down the block that’d easily had ample time to slow to a stop normally, if the driver had been reasonably attentive. But apparently the driver wasn’t paying much attention until the last minute, at which point he or she slammed on the brakes. The car behind that one, whose driver wasn’t smart enough to leave appropriate stopping room, smacked into it just hard enough to knock off its little plastic bumper.

So, the woman with the dog keeps on going. And I’m standing there, wondering if I should go say, “Hi, I’m a witness.” It was a really minor thing, though, and I suspect that the drivers just shrugged and swapped insurance numbers. I look up the block, waiting to find out if anybody comes out of their car yelling. Nobody does. But while I’m waiting, some bald guy in a red Jeep, maybe — something shiny, red, elevated and faintly mid-life-crisis-like, anyway — grins at me conspiratorially and says, “Well, that was rude!”

“Pardon?” Who, me?

“She was really rude!”

I’m lost. I couldn’t even see the genders of those drivers; the light and angle were wrong, and I was looking at the car damage anyway. I walk a few feet back to the corner. “Who?”

“The woman with the dog!”

“What?” Of all the people in this interaction, it’s the pedestrian he’s blaming? The who what now? Is it for walking away?

He nods at the corner curb and says, “She should have stopped!” He is beginning to get that I am not so eager to celebrate his judgmentalism.

Uh. Possibly, and purely for the sake of agreeableness, I’d buy that she was very slightly ill-advised, but that’s only because I’m surely in the top 5% for street-crossing caution. In no way is it reasonable to call her rude. I raise my eyebrows and state a fact: “She had the right-of-way.”

I expect him to tell me that’s no excuse. Instead, he gets huffy and gestures at the street. Clearly I am an idiot, and it is shocking that I am not supporting him in this. “There’s no crosswalk marked!!”

This is when my jaw drops. Yes, you ignorant and deluded entitlement case, that’s what they call an “unmarked crosswalk.” Generally speaking, every intersection contains legal crosswalks, whether or not they’re marked. I could actually feel the hinge of my jaw loosening for a moment before I said, pointing to the corner on which I stood, “Pedestrians have the right of way at every corner. You are wrong. Sorry.” (If only I could have included the link!)

At that point, having heard no yelling, I turned and walked away before I started getting rude. (Or ruder.) Because if you don’t know when pedestrians have the right-of-way, you don’t know how to drive, and in a better world your license would be taken away until you get a clue. Ah, for a better world.

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