Naughty and nice collide

A friend watched her son almost get hit crossing the street in front of their house.

Thankfully, nobody was injured and the traffic kept flowing after all parties acknowledged each other and went back to their respective behaviours.

What happened?

Her son decided to cross a busy, four-lane road about a block from the crosswalk and traffic light.

He was walking his bike from the sidewalk on his side to get to his friend on the other side of the road to travel to school.

A driver in the lane nearest to the curb stopped to let him cross, being “nice” and not worrying about the few seconds lost to this gesture.

As the boy was about to enter the second lane of traffic, a car in that lane went zooming by. The moving car was not able to see him because the stopped car would have been blocking the sightline.

First, we know that it’s not a good choice to cross in the middle of the block. What was the kid thinking?

Second, the driver who stopped with the best intentions of allowing the kid to safely cross inadvertently made the situation worse.

By coming to a halt in the middle of the block, the driver would only confuse the rest of the traffic unless those vehicles could see the same thing.

All road users need to think about their safety and the safety of anyone else they might affect.

The boy wasn’t thinking about his safety. Safe would have been going to the corner and crossing when the light turned green.

The driver wasn’t thinking about his safety or the safety of the boy.

Safe would have been maintaining the flow of traffic and not stopping in the middle of the block. And definitely not giving the boy a shortcut to getting hit by the car in the next lane over.

When the driver stopped, there was no indication of what was happening ahead. The driver just stopped.

The other lane was continuing to move. How soon before someone got impatient and darted from the stalled lane into the moving lane? And what would happen if they didn’t time it perfectly?

Many times when I’ve been on my bike waiting to make a left turn, an oncoming car would be “nice” and stop to allow me to complete the move.

For a while, I actually took offense to this because I didn’t want special treatment. If I’m acting like a car, treat me like a car.

But I had to realize that it was OK to accept kindness from a stranger, when it was safe to do so.

Sometimes, having someone pause to allow me to complete my action should be seen as a good thing, it means that I’m not invisible, people are paying attention.

I’ve learned to ride with the idea that I’m invisible, so it’s a nice surprise to be proven wrong.

If you’re on a single-lane road where your movement controls all of the traffic, then you can be gracious.

As a vulnerable road user such as a pedestrian or a cyclist, think about your safety and how your actions will affect traffic.

Is a little time saved worth the risk of one or more lives?

Typically, people in cars will look out for people on foot or on bikes. People on bikes will look out for pedestrians.

People on foot and on bikes will look out for cars and trucks because they know the risk of doing the opposite could be death.

Over all, people are good and want to do the right thing, but when we get impatient or distracted we fail to allow ourselves the opportunity to weigh all the potential outcomes of our actions.

Using the roads should never be done on auto-pilot just because we have travelled these roads for so long our bodies know how to do it.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.