Tag: traffic

Don’t pass a car that’s waiting to turn left

I had some choice words for that driver.

At a level FAR greater than in previous years, my family has been involved in several near-collisions in 2017, specifically in March and April. None of them involved the weather, and most of them took place in the daytime.

A majority fit into the category of the title, which I stole from the Monday traffic column in our local daily, compiled by Tim O’Brien. He, like several folks with the Times Union, is leaving for greener pastures after dealing with the parsimonious Hearst Corporation daily rag for years.

ITEM: The Wife is turning left; we’ll call her car A. The car facing her is also turning left, car 1. A vehicle behind her, NOT the car immediately back, but the car behind THAT, car 3, gets impatient with the wait, passes car 2 and 1 on the right. Car A sees car 2, but barely breaks in time in the turn to avoid getting hit by car 3.

ITEM: The Wife is turning left. The car facing her is also turning left, car 1. She doesn’t see, but I do, the bicycle passing car 1 on the right. If I hadn’t called it to her attention, it was likely that she would have T-boned bike 2, the rider of which, BTW, was not wearing a helmet.

ITEM: I’m riding my bike, going straight ahead; I’m vehicle A. Car 1, signaling left, is patiently yielding the right of way to vehicle A. Car 2, however, is having nothing to do with THAT, and passes car 1 on the LEFT, across the crosswalk and practically into my path before slamming on its brakes. As it tuns out, it was a nice day, and car 2 had its windows down. I had some choice, albeit repeatable, words for that driver.

Not all the near-collisions involved left turns. The Wife was turning right from a one-way street onto a two-way. But the driver coming from our right apparently thought he too was on a one-way, because he wasn’t staying right. IF she hadn’t aborted the turn at the last moment, we would have hit him for sure. The Daughter, in the back seat, got pretty shook up about this, and understandably so.

There are a couple other traffic examples in recent months, but you get the gist. As Phil Esterhaus used to say, “Be careful out there!”

Always look on the bright side of life

always-look-on-the-bright-side-of-lifeHey, I’m working on it, looking for the moments with a positive outcome. I got the idea from Ken Levine’s post, Those little pleasures, about which he notes: “Especially now, I’ll take all the pleasures – little or otherwise – that I can get.” Especially since Post-election stress is a big problem (and not just for liberals).

ITEM: My friends Broome and Penny became grandparents last month. Anna, who is partially named after me, and Will , are proud parents of Connor, born November 18.

ITEM: I’ve mentioned my late friend Vito Mastrogiovanni, who died from AIDS back in 1991. His sister Lisa befriended me on Facebook. We started reminiscing about her brother, and Vito’s friends Jane, Harry, and Donna all chimed in with Vito stories.

She mentioned that she and Vito had seen me in Boys in the Band back in 1975 in Binghamton. The director was named Charlie, but none of us could remember his last name. I posted the question to a Binghamton FB site and a guy came up with Charles Dietrich, who is now a professor of theater at Baruch College in New York City. I befriended Charles on FB and sent him my recollection of being in the play.

ITEM: Melanie is a blogger I’ve been following for a time. In mid-October, she wrote to me privately that, to her surprise, she has found somebody who wants to share his life with her. I wrote back and noted how wise and honest her blog is.

Then, about a month later, she wrote Because.

ITEM: I was crossing Madison Avenue in Albany, heading for the CVS drug store. This car was trying to make a right-on-red turn onto Main, but once he saw me in the crosswalk, he apologized profusely. I said it was cool, but he insisted that blocking pedestrian access in the crosswalk was unacceptable.

After he parked, he saw me IN the CVS and apologized one more time. Totally, unnecessary, and it made me laugh.

ITEM: SiriusXM Agrees to Pay Up to $99 Million to Settle Turtles-Backed Copyright Suit. I know it’s a complicated issue, involving differing state and federal copyright laws prior to 1972, but I don’t care. It made me happy. (Obligatory Happy Together link.)

ITEM: Arthur@AmeriNZ is posting a lot of holiday ads from around the world. I particularly enjoyed a Coke ad for three different countries, similar in format.

ITEM: This is sad, actually, but I’m glad she got her shot. ‘Jeopardy!’ contestant dies before show airs. Show scheduled to air Tuesday, December 13

As noted: Always look on the bright side of life, from my favorite Monty Python movie, Life of Brian.

OH, here are 7 breathing GIFs to help you calm down and take a moment.

L is for Lanes of Traffic

“When there’s no bike lane, you’re supposed to ride on the sidewalk.”

turn signal
1. In July, traveling north on that stretch of Interstate 90 in New York between the Pennsylvania border and Buffalo, closer to the former, there are four lanes of traffic, two in each direction.

The Wife is driving and is in the right lane. Another car is in the left lane, slowly passing us. Suddenly, a motorcycle darts between us! Another motorcycle is already ahead of the other car.

Then the motorcycles, in turn, proceed to drive between not one, not two, but FOUR pairs of cars, in about three minutes. I was happy no one got hurt.

2. I am riding my bicycle down my street. I am as far right as I can be, given the fact there is a string of parked cars. I can sense that there’s a car that wants to pass me, but there’s oncoming traffic, and this is not an option.

We catch a red light, and we both stop. I can pull to the right because there’s no car that close to the intersection.

The driver says, “There’s no bike lane.”

“OK”

“When there’s no bike lane, you’re supposed to ride on the sidewalk.”

“NO, sir!”

“That’s the law.”

“You are INCORRECT, sir. Check your drivers’ manual. There’s a section on bicycles in there.”

Seriously, I used to carry around the booklet from DMV for such interactions. In my state, it is ILLEGAL for me to ride on the sidewalk, unless I’m under 14. (Note: I’m not.)

Apparently, this is a problem elsewhere.

3. Still, I LOVE riding my bicycle in the city, because I often find change on the ground, where the driver’s side door might be. I’ll stop for even a nickel, but not for a penny. Though if I stop for a mixture of coins – it has happened – I’ll get the pennies as well.

4. August: I was waiting for a bus, when a young man, probably in his twenties, asked me if I could “spare some change” so he could ride the bus. I told him that I could “spare a 50-cent change card” that I happen to have. (The fare is $1.50, and if I put in two $1 bills, I get the change card.)

His eyes narrowed as he said, teeth clenched, “Have a nice day.” I don’t think he was being sincere.
***
Now I Know: Slow and Steady Wins the Lottery

The Calculus of Bad Driving

ABC Wednesday – Round 19

Y is for yield

“NOW he stops,” I thought.

yield to pedestrianBack in February, I had arranged for a certain speaker to give a talk at one of the Black History Month sessions in adult education at my church.

Unfortunately, about a week and a half before she was scheduled to visit, she was hit by a car at the corner of Central Avenue and Henry Johnson Boulevard, a major intersection in Albany. She survived with some broken bones and bruises, but she was in no shape to give her talk.

Now, I wasn’t there. But I would not be surprised if she were hit because some car failed to yield the right of way to her as a pedestrian. I believe this because I have seen three accidents at that very corner, and two of them happened that same way. The third was a car that failed to yield to an ambulance that had its siren and flashers.

Since that recent accident, I’ve seen more signs like this one. But in my limited experience, it has not made an appreciable difference in (bad) driver behavior.

Cars yielding to the pedestrian at intersections is a fundamental rule of traffic law in most places. I remember being at an intersection in San Diego when I waited for the car to inevitably rush through the corner. Instead, the driver stopped and looked at me with a look that said, “Hey, dummy, what are you waiting for? Cross the street!”

I’m more used to this: one winter’s day, crossing the street with the light, I was nearly being hit by some car coming from my right, who, under his incorrect reading of the Right on Red law – and illegally on his cellphone – failed to STOP and yield to the pedestrian traffic (me). I was so angry, I picked up a snowball and hit his back windshield as he was pulling away. The driver stopped, got out of his car, and yelled something. “YOU ALMOST KILLED ME!” I growled as I walked away from him. “NOW he stops,” I thought. (I was REALLY impressed with my snowball prowess that day.)

One of the trickier pieces of recent traffic law in New York State is the notion that, at an unmarked intersection, drivers should yield to pedestrians at crosswalks. This works well at intersections that are specially marked with signs, not so much at others.

abc18
ABC Wednesday – Round 18

The unchangeable mind

Can’t I be upset about Cecil AND X, Y and/or Z?

bike laneI met this guy the other day, and he made me rethink my answer to Jaquandor regarding his recent Ask Roger Anything question about this: “In this age of increasing partisan division, I am finding it harder and harder to even empathize with the ‘other side'”.

There was this rally I attended a week ago about protected bike lanes and a road diet for Madison Avenue in Albany. Lots of people spoke, fortunately very briefly, as it was HOT. Afterward, this one guy apparently approached one of the speakers, expressing his objections.

As I’m riding off, this same guy says to me, “Let me ask you something.” Hey, I’m a librarian, people ask me things all the time. “I asked this other fellow ” well, something about how, if bikes were going 20 miles per hour, and cars were going 30 mph, the accidents would be worse than if bikes rode on the sidewalk and negotiated around pedestrians going 10 mph. Thus, he concluded, bicycles should ride on the sidewalk.

I told him I agreed with the other fellow he talked to. But, because he really wasn’t interested in a discussion, just agreement, I was unable to actually address the fallacies of his argument, 1) that pedestrians would be more vulnerable on the sidewalk, 2) that the bikes WOULDN’T be going 15-20 mph BECAUSE they would be avoiding pedestrians. Or, and I’ve seen this personally, some of the bikers going through pedestrian traffic, just ringing their bells or shouting for pedestrians to get out of their way, which, as a pedestrian, I hate.

One can make legitimate complaints about bike lanes, in terms of costs and priorities. “When I was a kid” is not one of those explanations that I find useful. I also couldn’t get in a mention that there are places within the city of Albany limits without sidewalks.

Then the guy said, “Don’t you people have anything better to do?” Unsurprisingly, this has NEVER a compelling talking point to me, ever, nor its variant, “you must have too much time on your hands.” Did the people who designed this Bach ball thing, or deconstruct dominoes to put on YouTube, or write a blog every day not have other, more noble pursuits to engage in?

This blog post, Outrage and The Theory of The Universal Double Standard, touches on this. Why are you more distressed about the killing of Cecil the lion than about X, or Y, or Z? Wait, can’t I be upset about Cecil AND X, Y and/or Z?

This guy at the rally continues, more animatedly, “What’s wrong with this country? They spend too much time on unimportant stuff, like that environmental crap” and a litany of other things. What? Dealing with the environment’s a waste of time? A statement just too broad to counter.

“Four Marines died the other day, and nobody’s talking about that…” Except for people all over the country, including more than a few who temporarily provided armed protection to military recruiting stations. The false narrative was jaw-dropping to me.

“Meanwhile, a black kid gets killed and everybody…” At this point I rode away, knowing full well that he believes he’s “won” the argument, whatever that means. And I don’t care.

I got lectured on my Times Union blog about the Socratic method, which I’m not opposed to. But this conversation was not that.

Related: I continue to be fascinated by the means people use to gather news. Recently, someone on Facebook posted something about Sandra Bland, the Chicago-area woman who died in police custody, purportedly by suicide, after an unpleasant encounter with a police officer at a traffic stop. “Did anyone know about this?” Only for the last five days. “I didn’t read anything about it on the Internet.” This librarian doesn’t think “the Internet” is a source, only a conveyance. In any case, the story was on NBC, CBS, ABC, the New York Times, USA Today, etc., including on their online platforms. The story was by no means buried.

That’s not the first time I’ve seen that phenomenon, and it’s often couched in terms of the press “suppressing” the story. I’m perfectly aware of underreported stories, and one should kvetch about that fact when it’s actually true.

Ramblin' with Roger
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