26 lines
2.5 KiB
Markdown
26 lines
2.5 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: 'The Near-Miss'
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date: '2005-09-22T13:45:40-04:00'
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permalink: /the-near-miss/
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tags:
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- life
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- pondering
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---
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A few days ago, I came within a couple of inches of hitting a pedestrian.
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I was waiting at a stop sign, making a right-hand turn into traffic, watching for a break in the cars approaching from the left. A six-foot fence wraps around the corner to my right, and so when I’d pulled up to the intersection, I hadn’t seen anybody coming. As the break in the traffic made its way to me, I pulled out — barely missing the guy who had just crossed in front of my car from the right.
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He gave me the look I’ve given any number of drivers who have been stupidly unaware of pedestrians around them, a lingering, accusatory glare. And my blood ran completely cold.
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I haven’t been able to get that look, or that moment, out of my mind since. In my defense, I’ll say that I was always taught that, as a pedestrian, you never take anything for granted, and particularly not that a driver has seen you. If there’s any question — for instance, if you’ve just popped out from behind a tall fence and the driver of the car half pulled-out and inching forward at the corner is clearly staring over her left shoulder and hasn’t made eye contact with you at all — then you either wait, or you cross *behind* the car.[^1]
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So while I’m not willing to accept one hundred percent of the blame for this horror in the making, the fact remains that I was the one wielding the twenty-three hundred pound deadly weapon, and so it was incumbent on me to make sure that it wasn’t pointed directly at anybody. And I just can’t get the image of what could have happened out of my head.
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I’ve had accidents before, though not for many, many years. \[Insert mpeg of me knocking on desk.\] And I’ve occasionally made stupid, dangerous mistakes behind the wheel, had moments at which I’ve escaped a crack-up only through fast reflexes, or dumb luck, or both. But I’ve never come anywhere close to the sickening metal-on-flesh reality of a vehicle-pedestrian accident before, and I have to say that having come as close as I did is really freaking my shit the fuck out.
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—
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[^1]: The only exception to the rule of pre-crossing pedestrian-driver eye contact, and it’s a major one, arises in crossing pretty much any street in Manhattan. When you’ve got the WALK, you go — no looking. And god help you if you make eye contact with a turning cab driver: once they know you’ve seen them, they assume you’re planning on letting them go.
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