Die Another Day

2007-05-31 - 10:16 a.m.

Well, after hopefully saving a life on Saturday, I almost took a human one yesterday.

Picture this, if you please:

I was on my way to work. I take a couple residential streets instead of the main thoroughfares, so I can skip waiting for traffic signals. I'm driving eastbound. On the sidewalks are several groups of kids coming home from school. They are walking towards me, so they are going westbound...but they are on the sidewalk. With me so far? Okay.

Now, picture this: there's an idiot girl - maybe 11 or 12, so she's old enough to know better - on a bike that's in the street. She's zigzagging back and forth in the street, presumably to talk to different groups of friends.

She's riding her bike in the street...against the flow of traffic.

Now granted, I'm about the only traffic on the street at this point. That only makes her next move even dumber. She's talking with a group on the sidewalk on my left (the northern side of the street). When my car is about twenty feet away, she suddenly veers over to go to her friends on the other curb.

She swerves right in front of me.

I slam on my brakes and stop about seven feet from her. I blast my horn. She gives me a look that plainly says, "What's your problem?" Her friends laugh.

Don't they get this? If I wasn't alert and watchful, she could have been badly hurt. We've all heard about accidents when someone was on the phone or somesuch. I'm guilty of using my phone when I drive, too. I do try not to be when I'm on my way to work, for the very reason that the kids are going home.

But that's not the most frightening part of all this.

What's really scary...

...is that this stupid, foolish little girl...

...may someday...

...BREED.

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Parents: teach your children that accidents happen. Both sides need to watch what they're doing, and sometimes the other side doesn't.

A couple tons of automobile will not bounce off twenty pounds of bicycle.

Two hundred horsepower is no match for one bicycle power.

Please. Teach them this.

And please be careful when YOU drive.

Be seeing you.

Brin - 2007-05-31 20:59:47 -
Dave, having been in the car with you a lot, I will tell you here in front of everybody that you're one of the safest drivers I've ever had the privelege to ride with.

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