Dear California Drivers

I get it. The last time you walked anywhere was 20 years ago. You slide into your car just to go to the store on the corner. Why would anyone walk all the way over to a place they can see from their house? It’s a car culture. I understand.

So of course it doesn’t EVER occur to you that there may be pedestrians on the little roadways where you navigate your vehicle. FYI, pedestrians are people who get from place to place by WALKING! Shocking, I know. They also sometimes cross the street, where you are making a left hand turn.

I know you are completely unaware of this fact for you never, ever look to the right when turning left to check for them. You don’t think they exist. They could be less than 2 feet from the nose of your car in the cross walk with 3 children in tow and you would still be oblivious to their presence. They might be yelling and waving their hands even, but you in your sporty BMW with the music turned up, you don’t need to pay any attention to them. After all, this is SoCal, if they didn’t want to be run over they would have taken their car. Right?

And if the first person taking that turn didn’t bother to stop, well, why should you bother either? Those pesky laws about right of way are never really enforced anyway. Or, wait, don’t you actually have right of way, even if there is a pedestrian in the cross walk? They should have to jump out of your way, or wait until all 4 of you are finished taking you big left turn before continuing safely on their way. If the light changes before they reach the other side, that’s just their own fault really for being stupid enough to walk somewhere.

By all means, if one of those pesky pedestrians, who shouldn’t really exist anyway, has the audacity to glare at you and stare you down in order to get you to notice and stop your right turn before running over her children, feel free to yell at her out the window as she passes, “But I have a green light!” Duh, how silly for her to expect you to stop for her, that she has a green light and the right of way is of absolutely no consequence.

So dear driver, sleep peacefully tonight, completely oblivious to the number of times today you were almost guilty of vehicular manslaughter. Those images that flash through your head of little white crosses that mark the sides of your roads, and people waving their arms angrily as you pass, and worst of all someone confiscating your keys and forcing you to walk to every place within a two mile radius of where you live, those are just nightmares. Sweet dreams.

Love,
The woman you almost hit with your car the other day.