My Friend is Not Dead

My friend called me while I was grocery shopping to let me know that she had been hit by a car. A CAR. She was crossing in a crosswalk and a truck didn't stop (she had the right of way). The driver called an ambulance for her, and she is now in the hospital with fractures and pain medication. I'm not sure when the accident happened, as she was on meds and I was in a noisy store and so didn't get the whole story. She has some family here, but not much, so we'll be helping her a bit while she recovers. She's relatively okay, but has to take it easy until her bones heal.

When she called me, she started talking about a project we're working on together before she got to the important news about how she is not dead but could have been. She is crazy. Then, she told me that she was going to keep working on the project. Crazy woman. I have to admire her determination though. I told her to watch lots of movies and take lots of naps. I think getting hit by a car means you can take the day off--even a week would be clearly on the side of reasonable.

Pedestrians get by cars all of the time here. This is one of the least safe places to live in the country if you walk. I thought I had an old post about the pedestrian fatality count the news had going at the beginning of last year, but I can't find it. This is a big enough issue that I bring it up in classes when we do problem-solving exercises and discuss logic. The city's reaction to the problem was to increase jaywalking tickets, even though a lot of the people who have been hit have been in a crosswalk when they had the right of way. There were other actions taken I'm sure, but this is the one that went into immediate effect. And lots of drivers were complaining about how pedestrians don't look where they're going.

To which I respond, you are in car and are required by law to stop at crosswalks when people are in them or you are at a light. If you followed the law, people wouldn't be getting hit all of the time. Yes, some pedestrians are stupid, but YOU ARE IN A CAR--a great big killing machine. It's really not that hard. If you see a body in the road, stop. I could understand driver resentment if people were jumping into oncoming traffic willy-nilly and jaywalking (and lots of stupid people jaywalk, yes), but most of the accidents are NOT the result of willy-nilliness.