Pedestrian Adventures

Yesterday I was walking down Broadway and when I went to cross Pine Street--having a walk signal--the moron in the westbound car decided to turn right on red. She cut off my walk. IMHO the pedestrians with a valid walk signal have the right of way over vehicles at a red light intending to turn right.

It's not that I consider pedestrians to be King! When I worked up in Bothell, there was one particular intersection that drove me up the fraking wall. (OK, busted! I've been watching Battlestar Gallactica DVDs lately.) Here's the deal. Apparently in Washington, pedestrians have the right of way in crosswalks or something. So when I would approach this godforsaken intersection, any vehicles going by would come to a stop. A full and complete stop. In other words, they were going at their regular speed of 25 or 30 MPH and because they saw me out of the corner of their eye, they decelerated, stopped, settled, let me cross, and then went on their merry way.

Except, it took them longer to fraking decelerate to a complete stop than it would have taken if they had just driven through the goddamned intersection. I'm not going to walk in front of a car so I had to wait for them to finish their goddamned deceleration! Then I felt obligated to make haste as I crossed the intersection. Furthermore, I felt an obligation to make some show of appreciation for their goddamned delaying me by not just getting the frak out of my way by getting through the intersection as fast as possible!

Well that was when I working for a company in that area and I'm not there anymore so I don't have to put up with that much. But I still expect cars turning right to wait for me to cross before they make their right on red.