I've come down the hills of the Haight towards Van Ness at near-midnight in a cold wind and have had to almost come to a stop for a group of 15 crossing the road, if not for the pleasurable experience of having pedestrians stop for me, giving me right of way. "An optimist," Tim Coppola quips, "is a San Franciscan who looks only one way when crossing a one-way street."
A candidate for the Darwin Awards, my boss would probably say, is a person who crosses Market Street before the walk sign goes green, and still fails to look in the direction of traffic.
As you might have guessed, I did make unwanted contact recently with a pedestrian. It was on the east side of Market at New Montgomery. Here's what happened:
I had just crossed Third and was coasting towards New Montgomery; the light always turns red before I get to the intersection. By some chance, the light held at green for longer than usual, and the bike lane/right turn into NM was clear of cars.
I decide to gun it. I look up at the light and it was still green. My peripheral vision says there are no cars counter-flowing up NM and I make a last check that there moving obstructions coming down Montgomery or Post.
And that's when I saw him. He was on the far end of the North-South pedestrian lane, stepping onto the street before the No Walk had turned to Walk. He was looking straight ahead or at his PDA. Not at me. I'm the yellow cut-out below. He's the blue spot on the street.
I shout out He-llow! which maybe I should not have done and instead, should just have tried to avoid him, but instinct kicked in and told me I should give him a heads-up. Naturally he backed right into my path. It's like Neo visiting the Oracle in her apartment. Did I foresee the act of fate happen or did I cause it by foreseeing it and calling attention to it. Either way, it happened.
The green splash is where I hit him. How do I know this? Because I got knocked off my bike and stumbled into the dark green newspaper dispenser on the right, where I audibly whacked! my bike helmet. (If you don't wear a helmet, don't bike. Especially in traffic.)
I'm still on my feet and so is my khaki-garbed obstacle, probably still in a sugar and saturated fat from the McDonald's blueberry bacon muffin (store on the right). I steel myself and turn to him, "Watch where you're going, man!"
At this point there are 4 or 5 other pedestrians who are looking at the otherwise comedic aftermath. When I say what I said, they all say, "You ran a red light!"
No way, sirs, ma'ams. If I ran a red light—and red lights on this intersection are synchronized with the crossing green lights—then how come I ran into McFatty 20 feet away from the street corner and not into them???
This is approximately where I stood (albeit more to the left). The big circle is Sleepy the Street Crosser, and the small ones are the ones that I dodged by some miracle of translocation and invisibility. Look at how far this point is from the intersection. I clearly had at least a half second through the intersection before the light turned red.Ah well, it is a moot point now. Everyone is safe and sound, and though I haven't inspected my bike for damage yet, it's run well to 25th in the Mission and back to the TL, where I live, so No Blood, No Foul.
The only point I want to make here is if you wish to live in a safe environment, it doesn't happen by doing less of something like paying attention; it happens with vigilance, awareness, and common sense.
