Nobody walks in the suburbs of Portland

There are problems with living in an urban center where many, if not most, people walk, and working out in a fringe industrial area where few people walk — where most of the people live out in the suburbs and boonies (wait — is there a difference?) where pedestrians are a rare and novel curiosity. I tend to walk to lunch a lot. People making left and right turns tend to not see me when I use the crosswalk.

Today, I came within about 30 centimeters from getting run over by someone wanting to make a right turn. He stopped, I started crossing, but it turned out he stopped because he was confused (I think wanting to make a right-on-red turn, waiting for a break in the traffic, and hesitating a bit because traffic stopped but he did not notice he had the green.) He stopped with the middle of his bumper pretty close from my legs. A half-second later, and I would have jumped up on the hood of his small Japanese car — partly out of personal protection and partly with the intent of coming down with the full-force of anger and retribution, denting the hell out of his hood. Fortunately, it didn’t come down to that.

Posted in: Dear Diary

One thought on “Nobody walks in the suburbs of Portland”

  1. Oh it happens everywhere, mostly on fast 1-way streets. Drivers turning right onto a 1-way street are looking for traffic on their left and don’t even check for pedestrians on their right.

    As a rule I assume the driver has no idea I’m there and walk behind the car. Though, considering the money issues I’ve been having, I might want to adopt a more care-free attitude.

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