Take Care Crossing NYC Streets! Man Hit at E. 42nd & 2nd Ave.

Nom, that is just terrible. I really hope the guy is OK.

Good for you for making sure things were done right.

No one may thank you for caring, but it was the right thing to do. Too many folks think when something happens, it is someone else problem to deal with, and then nobody does.

If I had left school two minutes earlier yesterday I would have had a billboard fall on me:

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1142463012943&call_pageid=968350130169&col=969483202845

There was a lot of blood on the sidewalk. This world is such a random place sometimes. You never know what can happen.

Akiva

um, take care crossing ANY street....not just NYC streets

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That's really sad. I too really hope the man's okay.

But I drive in the city quite a bit and between drivers and pedestrians, it's just a crazy situation. You have the cabs and buses cutting everyone off, randomly stopping (cabs moreso), being all the way in the right line of like a 5-lane avenue and deciding they need to make an immediate left turn and cut everybody off...all the cars that randomly stop, etc.

And as much as we have to be respectful and careful about pedestrians, they need to do the same thing, and I rarely see it. (I'm certainly not accusing this guy or even assessing this situation, just a general comment I'm making from my own experience). The "don't walk" sign means nothing to them. Especially on Broadway around the starting time of performances they just keep walking and walking in packs and it's pretty much impossible for cars to make any turns at all. Then they'll decide they don't think they see a car coming, so walk when cars have a green light, and then cars have to make sure not to hit them. Then there's the people who begin walking when the light's yellow and decide they're going to take forever to cross. If you're turning, and it seems you can go, a pedestrian not paying attention will be in their own world and cut right in front of your car, causing you to make a really quick stop.

Obviously at times I'm a pedestrian, and I'm not going to lie and say I never walk if there's a "don't walk" sign but I do try to be courteous. If I see 5 cars are waiting to turn and I get the blinking stop light, I let the cars go. Or I too do sometimes go when as I begin to walk the light turns yellow. However, I see that and I dash across the street to get out of the way of the cars by the time they get the green light.

I wish there was a way to improve this driver-pedestrian relationship and make things generally safer and more accomodating to everyone...but I don't know if that's possible.

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As is a chainsaw

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as is a knife, a candlestick, or a rope

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That is probably a bit like what Catherine the Great must have felt.

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I live for statements like: "If I had left school two minutes earlier yesterday I would have had a billboard fall on me."

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Yeah Namo, I heard about a bad car accident on a New Hampshire highway recently and realized that if I had been out driving on the highway that day, at that moment and lived in New Hampshire, that could have been me. It really makes you think.

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