>Certainly, drivers have a responsibility to yield to pedestrians crossing the street. But, regardless of local and state laws, pedestrians have a responsibility to exercise caution when stepping or riding into a roadway
On two different occasions this weekend, I was sitting at stop signs waiting to cross Ridgewood Ave (not in the heart of the CBD).
In one instance, as the traffic cleared and I prepared to pull forward, a high school age boy on a bike rode out in front of my car with one hand on the handle bars and one hand holding a cell phone to his ear. He didn’t slow down as he left the sidewalk and crossed in front of me. Nor did he even look to see if the cars waiting to cross the intersection were starting to move.
In the second instance, a group of teen age girls, engrossed in their conversation, stepped off the curve and crossed the street just as I began to pull forward, forcing me to stop again. They did not even look up to see if a car might be coming and just assumed that the traffic would stop for them.
These are not uncommon occurrences and lead me to question whether we are overlooking the responsibility of pedestrians to take responsibility for their own actions. It reminds me of people, who want to blame Wall Street for the financial crisis in 2008 and don’t hold accountable the millions of borrowers, who took out irresponsible mortgages that they could not afford.
Certainly, drivers have a responsibility to yield to pedestrians crossing the street. But, regardless of local and state laws, pedestrians have a responsibility to exercise caution when stepping or riding into a roadway. What ever happened to “looking both ways before crossing a busy street”? Let’s not be too quick to assume the rash of traffic accidents over the past few years are the sole fault of careless drivers. It seems that this is an extension of the “nanny state” mentality that our current political leaders seem to be embracing.
