Driving Me Crazy

Over the last several years, the city of Fayetteville has gone to great efforts to make the city bicycle and pedestrian friendly. There's even a proposal in the works downtown for a $7 million network of trails that would connect the trail fragments that currently exist all over town. Now I just wish there were something we could do about the drivers.

Exhibit A

After I was done at school today, I had an hour to wait before my sister was finished with her class. I decide to walk to Blockbuster and rent a movie. It was a good twenty minute one-way trip along one of the busier streets in town. Being the older part of town, the sidewalks are mostly right at the side of the road with no buffer space, so you can feel the breeze of the cars zipping by at well over the speed limit.

Though the environment isn't the most pedestrian friendly, most of the drivers were quite accommodating. I crossed several side streets with no signals as people were trying to turn onto or off of these streets. Most people slowed to let me pass or stopped entirely and waved me on. One even shouted something I didn't quite catch out his open window of his beat-up old pickup truck. I choose to think it was a compliment for conserving fossil fuels.

Despite the mostly uneventful trip there, at the last crossing before I returned to the school, I nearly got mowed down. The intersection of Razorback Ave. and Sixth St. is a large and busy one, especially when school is letting out. It lies between the University of Arkansas campus and access to Interstate 540 along Razorback Rd. and the Fayetteville High School and a busy strip of businesses and fast food restaurants along Sixth St. It's a five-lane intersection going both ways.

When I got to the intersection, I pushed the button for the pedestrian crossing signal and waited for it to change. After a few brief moments of watching the traffic whiz by, my signal changed to "Go" and the cross-traffic signal turned red. I took two steps out into the intersection and a woman in a little red Honda hit the gas to take a right turn. I jumped back and she gave me a dirty look like I'd almost left a blood stain on her bumper. I'm still here, so I guess my dirty look was better.

Exhibit B

On the way home from school, I was in my car. This is a good place to be, because anyone running into you has to go through the metal and glass before they find bone and flesh. It's also a place to be when watching other drivers.

This afternoon, we hit the intersection of Sang Ave. and Hatfield St. just as a school bus was stopping to let passengers out. The bus had it's orange lights flashing when I first noticed it and started to slow down, yet the vehicle in front of me whizzed right on through even after the stop sign was out and the kids were unloading.

My sister recognized the vehicle and it's driver. It was Anna Sagan, one of her old friends from elementary school. She must have left the high school just a few seconds before us. I haven't decided yet whether or not to mention the incident to Anna when I see her at school on Monday or not, but it's awfully tempting.