TorontoCranks

As cynical as I can sometimes be I have always had faith that people are good and will respect the lives of fellow human beings. Yet every once and awhile someone comes along to challenge my faith. Today driving, ya sorry, I was southbound on University turning to go west on Hoskins. There were people crossing the street and I stopped for them. This cabbie starts blowing his horn and yelling at me to go through. It was raining and I figured I would wait for all of the pedestrians to get through. I was dry. This caused a delay of all of 15-20 seconds and got me a couple of smiles. After I got going the cabbie followed me trying to get by me in the bike lane, he swerved a couple of times trying to avoid parked cars. It was obvious he had something to say to me. I ignored him.

We both caught a light at St.George. He had to stomp really hard on his brakes to stop. This is some of what he had to say to me. “You do not have to stop there you fucking idiot. Where the fuck did you learn to drive? The pedestrians have to wait for you. It is the LAW! The pedestrians will get out the way when they see you coming. The law says you can go straight throw and run the assholes down if they do not obey the sign. They know what to do. The law says you do not have to stop…” He went on and on about the law and how I should have not stopped. There were a bunch of other cuss words thrown in there to. He went very beet red and slapped his steering wheel around.

The cabbie was right. The pedestrians are supposed to wait for a gap in traffic before they cross at that intersection. It says so right on a sign in the intersection. Regardless, it does not mean there is a death penalty for anyone disobeying the sign. I am not a good enough driver to avoid a pedestrian who does not do what I expect them to do when I charge through an intersection. I told him what I thought of his attitude. You can just imagine how that went over with him. What I should have done was called the cops to get the jackass off the road or at least charged for assault on his own car.

The rest of the day all I could think of is how fucked up people are if they are willing to risk other peoples’ lives for the sake of a 15-20 second delay.