| Jaywalking
a Dangerous Practice |
|
To the editor:
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| Jaywalkers! |
| Michelle Kirkpatrick couldn't have said it any better. What
is the problem here? We have lights and marked crosswalks
on each corner. There is another marked crosswalk as you leave
the Elden Street shopping center. Yet, we see it all the time,
pedestrians dashing back and forth, in between cars. Day in
day out, daylight or at night, they wander into the street.
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| Are we really expected to be looking for someone to be careless
enough to run out between moving vehicles while we as drivers
are focused on the traffic around us? |
| I actually witnessed a mother and her two small children
being dragged across the street not even 10 feet from the
safety of a cross walk to run between cars and trucks to cross
Elden. If she doesn't care about her own safety, what about
the safety of her two children? What is she teaching them?
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| There is a bus stop on either side of Elden Street and the
pedestrians crossing the road would only have to walk about
20 feet to a crosswalk to be safe. Do they? No. They start
out lane-by-lane, walking across the road. With our automobiles
today getting bigger and bigger, you cannot see around the
car in front of you or to the side of you. |
| You certainly wouldn't expect to see a pedestrian run out
in between cars on a major highway would you? What is the
difference here? We have already had one fatality of a pedestrian
who was crossing the parkway not in a cross walk. How many
more is it going to take to get these people to follow the
law? |
| My concern is not for the foolish pedestrian who chooses
to risk his own safety, it's for me as a driver or for my
kids who are entering the driving world. What happens to us
if we should hit one of these careless people? Charges probably
wouldn't get filed because the person wasn't in a cross walk,
but what about us? Do we deserve to go through life knowing
that we ran over someone in the street? |
| We have sidewalks, we have crosswalks. Let's do something
to get everyone to use them. Come on. Herndon Police, please,
for our sakes if not for the foolish people risking their
lives, let's get them to stop and cross the street in a legal
fashion. I am sure they make signs that can be posted in both
English and Spanish to encourage them to not run across the
roadway and to use the crosswalks that are already in place. |
| Christine Cozza |
| Herndon |
