Photo: Screenshot from LiveLeak
People often forget this fact, but leaving your car at home and becoming a pedestrian doesn’t mean you don’t have anything to do with traffic anymore.
As long as you walk on the sidewalks and not somewhere in the woods, the contrary applies: you’re just as much part of traffic as the cars driving by, except now you’ve lost the protection that metal cage we call a car offers.
That means it falls on you to keep an eye out four idiots and moronic drivers, just like you would if you were behind the wheel on your daily commute to work. You never know where disaster might strike from, so it’s well worth it to be on the lookout.
Public transportation makes no exception. You may not be able to influence the collision, and you’re usually in the larger vehicle (buses have very few natural predators out there on a city street), but good awareness and grabbing tightly on the handle might make the difference between coming out of a crash unscathed, with a bloody nose, or even worse.
When on foot, the greatest threat comes from the roadway. That’s where large and heavy objects move at high speeds often under the control of people who don’t really know what they are doing. But the emphasis must be placed on "high speeds."
It can be tiresome not to be able to relax on the sidewalk either, but it’s not as bad as it sounds. In reality, all you need to do is make sure you never have your back turned towards the traffic, and you keep scanning what’s happening there with your peripheric vision. It could turn you into a paranoid maniac, but it could also save your life one day.
These two guys did not do that. Well, to be fair, sitting on a corner means you can’t possibly cover all angles all the time - and the car did come at a very high speed - but the reaction was slow nevertheless. The accident looked like one of those handbrake turn parking records where there’s only a hair width between the moving car and the other two. Only in this case the car wasn’t parking, but flying, and the other two weren’t cars, but human beings.
If the vehicle hitting the sidewalk curb were anything larger than the hatchback, those two would be celebrating Christmas in a totally different way. If at all. Consider this video a wake-up call and don’t rely so much on drivers when you’re out there on foot.
[LIVELEAK=http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a17_1450792323]
That means it falls on you to keep an eye out four idiots and moronic drivers, just like you would if you were behind the wheel on your daily commute to work. You never know where disaster might strike from, so it’s well worth it to be on the lookout.
Public transportation makes no exception. You may not be able to influence the collision, and you’re usually in the larger vehicle (buses have very few natural predators out there on a city street), but good awareness and grabbing tightly on the handle might make the difference between coming out of a crash unscathed, with a bloody nose, or even worse.
When on foot, the greatest threat comes from the roadway. That’s where large and heavy objects move at high speeds often under the control of people who don’t really know what they are doing. But the emphasis must be placed on "high speeds."
It can be tiresome not to be able to relax on the sidewalk either, but it’s not as bad as it sounds. In reality, all you need to do is make sure you never have your back turned towards the traffic, and you keep scanning what’s happening there with your peripheric vision. It could turn you into a paranoid maniac, but it could also save your life one day.
These two guys did not do that. Well, to be fair, sitting on a corner means you can’t possibly cover all angles all the time - and the car did come at a very high speed - but the reaction was slow nevertheless. The accident looked like one of those handbrake turn parking records where there’s only a hair width between the moving car and the other two. Only in this case the car wasn’t parking, but flying, and the other two weren’t cars, but human beings.
If the vehicle hitting the sidewalk curb were anything larger than the hatchback, those two would be celebrating Christmas in a totally different way. If at all. Consider this video a wake-up call and don’t rely so much on drivers when you’re out there on foot.
[LIVELEAK=http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a17_1450792323]
Google News