Friday, October 21, 2011

Pedestrian Enters & Exits Car Blocking Crosswalk

Fun Fare: A Treasury of Reader's Digest Wit and Humor (Pleasantville, NY: The Reader's Digest Association, 1949), p. 245.

At a busy intersection in Oklahoma City, as a traffic signal turned red, a four-door sedan rolled to a stop, completely blocking the pedestrian crosswalk. Instead of following a flow of pedestrians around the front and rear of the car, a middle-aged man walked straight ahead, opened the read door, climbed through the car and stepped out the other door, leaving both doors wide open, while amid the honking of horns the driver stared bewildered after his retreating form. -- Oscar E. Gram.

http://www.timescolonist.com/entertainment/senior+versus+crosswalk/5586185/story.html

Times Colonist [Victoria, BC, Canada]
21 October 2011

The senior versus the crosswalk hog

By Steve Wallace, Times Colonist

When you teach driving for as long as I have, you see some very strange things. Every professional driver who spends a lifetime behind the wheel has stories to tell. Here is one of mine.

As my student driver pulled up to a four-way stop, I noticed a vehicle opposite us had also stopped, but was significantly over the crosswalk line. Cross traffic had interrupted his path through the intersection.

A senior was attempting to cross the street by walking between the freshly painted white lines delineating the crosswalk. She became so incensed that she walked in front of the driver's car and started to pound on his hood with her umbrella as she scolded him for the obvious driving indiscretion. [...]

She expected the driver to vacate the intersection. More cross traffic, thinking the show was over, further delayed the driver's movement across the intersection.

The senior took a few steps toward the back door of the already embarrassed driver and noticed there was not enough space to walk behind the car. She then proceeded to open the back door and proudly announced: "If I cannot go around you. I will go through you."

She got in the car, slid across the back seat and out the other door and walked away, chastising the driver once again for blocking her walking path. The stunned driver now had both back doors open and was seemingly paralyzed. [...]

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