WWBD?
In last week’s column I wrote about the pedestrian safety situation in town. Or more specifically, about the lack of it.
To illustrate, I said things are so bad that the only way to cross our streets safely was in a helicopter, which isn’t really true, since you could cross just as safely in a hot air balloon, or if you’re a fan of Art Deco, a dirigible.
But as snarky as those comments are, they contain more than a hint of truth. For the fact is when you cross a downtown street here — almost any street — you’re taking life, and limbs, in your hands.
Worst of all are our crosswalks. According the the law, pedestrians have right of way in them. In other words, you step into the crosswalk and all drivers, in all lanes, have to stop. But that’s only the law in the books, because the law in effect is The Law of the Jungle. In other words, a car might stop … or it might not. Or the car in the closest lane will stop, but as you walk across the crosswalk, cars in the other lane will just cruise through as if either it’s your job to watch out for them, or you’re wearing your invisibility cloak.
Since everyone knows the crosswalks are next to useless, people cross all the hell over the place, adding to the overall danger. Not only is My Home Town a vacationer’s paradise, but a jaywalker’s one as well.
Adding to the sad state of pedestrian safety, and sanity, is driver rudeness. Take what I saw yesterday in Berkeley Square. An older couple was in the crosswalk, crossing from the Blue Line side, and a car in the near lane stopped for them. So far, so good.
Then another car stopped behind the first one. The couple got past first the car, who waited for them to fully cross the street. It was not only a polite thing to do, but a smart one as well, since the stopped cars in that lane would signal any cars coming in the other lane that peeps were in the crosswalk. But before the couple got across the street, the guy in the second car gave two long blasts of his horn. Like maybe he was in a hurry to meet with his Swiss banker in the Waterhole.
But as stupid and rude as that behavior is, it’s not unique. Or maybe if drivers think you’re taking to long to cross, they won’t blow the horn — instead, they’ll just yell an obscenity and maybe for good measure give you the one-finger peace sign.
There are other traffic messes — both the drivers’ and pedestrians’ faults — but there’s no reason to give example after example, since I’m sure you get the idea, especially if you walk through town very much.
Or to quote one of my old bosses: “You don’t have to eat all of a rotten egg to know it’s rotten.”
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One for all
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The sad truth is, when it comes to the slopgut car/pedestrian situation in town, the forces of law and order had failed to protect us.
So what to do?
After thinking about it awhile, I realized if I wasn’t safe within the law, the only thing I could do was go outside the law. Essentially, instead of thinking like a law-abiding citizen and waiting to be rescued, I had to think like a pirate and rescue myself.
And so I asked myself, WWBD? (that is, What Would Blackbeard Do?) The answer was immediate, and I acted on it by getting a 3-foot-by-5-foot skull and crossbones flag, zip tied it to an old fishing rod, and took it to the streets — literally: I stood on a bunch of different crosswalks, waved that bad boy to and fro, right at windshield height, and guess what? Yup, you got it: Every mother’s son behind the wheel stopped way in advance of the crosswalk line. From the drivers, I got smiles, frowns, pop-eyed bemusement and even a laugh or two. I even got a thumbs up, without ever getting any other finger raised in my specific direction.
In short, as The Buccaneer of the Blue Line, I can cross any street in town, any time I want, and not worry about getting either brushed off the crosswalks or flattened on them. But while that’s good news for me, it’s no solution for the thousands of others in town who lack the necessary theatricality and chutzpah.
So what about those poor souls?
Well, I think the solution to our traffic daymare is fairly simple. It only requires that the powers-that- be enforce already-existing laws.
And how to go about that, you ask?
It’d be a multi-phase process, involving the village board and the police department.
Since the first step to solving any problem is to admit you have it, and that’s where the board has to begin. If they meet and decide there’s no problem, then there are three things they’d need to do:
1. Make sure their liability insurance for pedestrian crushings is in the mega-millions and the premiums are paid up.
2. Get a bunch of Hallmark cards, of either the “Get Well Soon” variety (for optimists) or the ” Sincere Condolences on Your Recent Loss” variety (for pessimists).
3. And should my worst fears come to pass, agree on what story they’ll tell the press, the lawyers, and everyone else about why nothing was done to protect pedestrians.
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Walkin’ the talk
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If, however, they decide that indeed there is a problem, then my game plan for them would be as follows.
First, have a media blitz — in the paper; on the radio; on Facebook — both on the the board’s and the police department’s groups, as well as Saranac Lake Neighbor Helping Neighbor — announcing the traffic regulations will now be rigorously enforced. Any drivers going through crosswalks with people on them will be ticketed and fined, say, oooh, a cool $500 for their first offense. Jaywalkers will also be ticketed and fined, say $250, since they put themselves at risk, rather than the drivers. But no exceptions will be made. Then enforce it.
To enforce it, we’d need cops in the street, doing the ticketing. Since we have two fully tricked-out cop bikes, why not do something really radical with them, like have our cops ride them around town? I saw one cop on a bike a few weeks ago, but that was my only sighting. Aside from it being a waste of both money and a useful resource, it removes the police from the rest of us — which riding around in cars also does.
However, zip around on the bikes, make your presence known, and guess what? Not only will it make drivers and pedestrians consider obeying the law, it’ll make the cops accessible, as they were when they walked the beat. In other words, we could talk to them, they could talk to us, and we’d actually get to know each other as people, not just as either nameless authority figures we see behind car windows, or nameless citizens we see hither, thither and yon.
A further request on my behalf: To find out whether the situation is as serious as I say it is, or I’m just one more sadly deluded old geezer, have all the cops and the village board members actually walk around town, all around town, a bunch of times. Try all the crosswalks, like that freak show at Bloomingdale Avenue and Broadway, or the one by Nori’s, or the one by the boat launch. Oh yeah, and have the cops do it in civvies. A cop in uniform is enough to make scofflaws act like solid citizens, and make solid citizens act like the Christ child. If drivers don’t know they’re cops, they won’t try to be on their best behavior, and there’ll be no gilding of the lily, as it were.
That’s it for my plan. If the authorities don’t like it, then they can come up with a better one. But what we need is not the perfect plan, but some plan put into action.
My dear friend, Ed Woodward, was a Navy Commodore during WWII, in command of a flotilla of nine destroyers. Amazingly, he started and ended the war with all nine, so he was someone who understood organization, logistics, and problem-solving. On his house he hung a sign he made that was a perfect reflection of his character and fine bit of advice for everyone — especially people trying to resolve the problem on our mean streets.
It was: Any Plan, Even A Poor Plan, Is Better Than No Plan At All.
And as a gentle reminder, let me add, The best plan in the world, if not implemented, is no plan at all.