ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[jeffster]

But her response was "I didn't see you".

Right, the problem is that she didn’t see you; and she didn’t see you because she didn’t look. Whether or not her car actually came to a full stop is irrelevant. I would never roll a stop in that situation; I would see that there are other cars and stop. It sounds like she needed to wait anyway. But if one can determine that it is safe to proceed before one has finished stopping (for example, because there is no-one anywhere nearby at all), then what is the stop for? It’s just a legally-required ritual with no real-world effect.

I take a similar approach to crossing, as a pedestrian, against a red hand. The rule is different from crossing on a walking person. When it is a walking person, the rule is “is it safe?”. When it is a red hand, the rule is “can any vehicle traffic easily observe me violating their right of way?”. This is very different, and basically means that I won’t cross unless I’m confident that no driver will even have to worry about the fact that I’m crossing. By the time they would even start thinking about what I’m doing, I am already well away from the intersection. This implies of course that I don’t actually cross against a red hand very often, except in a few locations with excellent visibility and very simple traffic flow such as University at the LRT tracks.

But that's the problem -- people not stopping fully and then checking are creating accidents. Stoping and checking requires you to use your brain, slowing and simply checking doesn't work the same way.

You see a lot of pedestrians being run over at intersections because someone going right on a red (or at a stop sign) and not stopping and checking first, they're slowing and checking at the same time, so you don't have the same focus of your surroundings. As for when it comes to pedestrians "Is it safe" when you have the "walking person (or at a stop sign)" the answer is always "NO" if there are any cars present, since 90% of drivers disobey 'who has rights'. It's never, ever safe to cross at an intersection because drivers don't know the rules of the road, including STOPPING and CHECKING at red lights and stop signs. My last scare was when I was crossing with the "Walking Person" when some dickhead decided it was OK to go through the red light (straight through) and almost hit me. I now mostly 'jay walk' because I have control as to whether or not I am hit.

My driving has changed too, if I see a school bus I pull far right as possible, so as to let any asshole pass the bus if that's their desire, and I'll do whatever I can to avoid being rear-ended when stopping/pulling over an EMS. Obviously KW has some very important people that it is so urgent to get to their destination that it's OK to ignore traffic laws. I'm just, sadly, not important enough (except to my kids).