When Crossing the Street is Tempting Fate

I hear theres no problem crossing the street in the suburbs. get the fuck out of brooklyn and stop your bitching.

Yeah, that light needs a left turn arrow, majorly.

One answer would be walk into the crosswalk and, as the van turns to you, just stop. Believe me, the last thing the driver wants to do is hit you, because he'll lose his job, his boss will get sued, and chances are all of the illegal business they're doing will get dragged into the light.

Or the city could just put a left turn signal at the traffic light. Until then, it's every ped for himself.

That was not a very perilous video. I get what she's saying but there are more dangerous crossings than that. The real danger I would say is the NY traffic rule of cars getting 2-3 seconds free to run a red light. How many times a day I see that happen, just in time for you to step off the curb.

There is a pretty simple solution to the problem, and that is to stop treating motor vehicles, especially private automobiles, as sacred cows. Just because someone goes around in a large machine does not give that person the right to push everyone else around.

"I've taken to making eye contact with the person in the vehicle. Trying to remind them that I am a person..."

Yes, this is what you do. It's also just so that you can tell if the driver sees you at all.

Today I learned that wandering blindly into oncoming traffic could be dangerous.

I bet most of the problems at intersections like 34th and 7th, or 34th and 5th, 42nd and 8th, or 96th and B'way can be explained by commuters running to catch trains and buses. Buses would do well to make two stops (one on each side of the intersection) to keep the idiots from blindly running across the street to catch them, and people would do well to miss their trains rather than risk their lives. (It's only a half hour more with their screaming brats or nagging wives/husbands they're losing, after all).

I see people doing very fooish things at these intersections. And the intersection at 32nd and Pk Ave S has a sign letting people know they'll be killed by a car if they're not careful. And it's true -- all one has to do is not obey traffic lights, and you're dead.

People with cars do crowd pedestrians. I've taken to making eye contact with the person in the vehicle. Trying to remind them that I am a person, not an obstacle to their mad-dash car trip.

A professor at my law school was hit, and killed, by the back wheels of a turning garbage truck two years ago. I am pretty far ideologically from those critical mass people, but this town needs to focus on bicycle and pedestrian safety. At present bike/pedestrian safety is no more than an afterthought.

Wow, she explained the concept of traffic vs. pedestrians at EVERY INTERSECTION IN NYC.

Brooklyn and Queens are worse than Manhattan because of a greater concentration of savage cab and livery drivers. Just pay attention, assume every driver is not paying attention and you'll be fine.

Don't ever blindly cross just because you have the right of way (great, now she's got ME explaining how to cross the street).

i kept hoping someone would hit her. what a disappointment.

more green hats please.

Oh no, I have to look both ways when crossing a street in NYC? Call the police!

Sadly, Keri was demolished by a greyhound bus during her second run at filming this short. Oh Keri, why?... Why.

I don't get this either. Move to the freakn burbs if you are so scared.

This seems like any busy intersection in NYC and not as bad as some.

The woman seems deathly afraid of cars ... which is odd for someone living in Brooklyn. I guess if you're taking 8 toddlers to the park, by yourself, crossing this intersection would be a tough one ... is that the point of this?

Edittrixie - I'm very skeptical that's true. Can't find anything in this DOT traffic rules doc that says anything like that, and that's so far from how it works in real life. On busy, multi-lane streets you could simply never turn, because there's always going to be a ped in the crosswalk somewhere.

To cross Queens Boulevard you need eyes behind your head and on the side.

Wow, you mean you actually have to look and be wary of cars turning on a green light? Zounds!

Every corner around Prospect Park is a bitch because of the turns and roundabouts. It's particularly crappy Saturday mornings around GAP with the farmer's market. My advice, be a defensive pedestrian - move fast and give a-hole drivers the right of way.

Queens Blvd. is the recommended place for all those who enjoy collecting human teeth.

The size of the space and the volume of pedestrian and vehicle traffic make this a perfect Barnes Dance intersection candidate.

Very recently (I think it was last year or two years ago), the city passed an ordinance that cars MUST NOT enter a crosswalk when a pedestrian is present.

This is MY intersection. It's always a bitch.

It does look like a dangerous intersection, though I'm not sure this woman really makes the best case for it. Most city intersections are really a negotiation between peds and turning cars, so simply noting that there are cars in the intersection (or even a car that gets stuck in the crosswalk) is not super persuasive.

The thing that makes this one dangerous, IMO, is all from the car's pespective, in the size of the intersection that the cars traverse before they encounter peds. I know from experience that one can get a little panicky when you are out in the middle of a big intersection and are less likely to take the time to stop and look for peds. Plus you don't really get to see the people amassing on the sidewalk and stepping off, instead you start from far away, possibly dodging oncoming traffic to make your turn, and THEN you suddenly encounter people.

Here is the link to the Mayor's office:

http://www.nyc.gov/portal/site/nycgov/menuitem.bd08ee7c7c1ffec87c4b36d501c789a0/index.jsp?doc_name=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nyc.gov%2Fhtml%2Fom%2Fhtml%2Fcontact_the_mayor.html

Bravo. I will find a link to send this to Bloomberg's office. Hopefully others will do the same.