The Responsibility of Driving

Unlike the majority of people in North America, I don't actually own a car. I walked when I need to go somewhere nearby, or take the bus if my destination is further away. My lack of a car puts me in an increasingly uncommon position to assess how people drive from a pedestrian's point of view.

I wish I could report good news on the subject.

Now let me say right away that I have not taken driving lessons before, nor do I have a driver's license. I do, however, possess a degree of common sense, and though I may not know how to drive (in the sense of knowing all the finer details of operating a vehicle), I am at least aware of how not to drive.

It's been my experience that a lot of drivers aren't very kind to pedestrians as a whole. I don't mean to say that they'll go out of their way to mow someone trying to cross the road (though a disturbing number of people probably would think that was a barrel of laughs), but a high percentage of drivers are unsympathetic to pedestrians and that rules concerning them.

While crosswalks are available at just about any street corner with a traffic light, many cities also have them on longer stretches of road, after at an intersection, but in places where there are no traffic lights to stop any oncoming traffic. In my experience, this sort of crosswalk is often ignored by drivers. There are some streets in the city in which I live where I have stood for over ten minutes at a crosswalk, waiting for traffic to stop so that I can cross. More often than not they speed on by, completely ignoring the person standing at a marked crosswalk who's growing more impatient with each passing car.

Sometimes it happens that the cars moving in one direction will stop to let me cross, but the cars coming from the other direction will keep driving. I can take my chance and cross to the middle of the road and hope that somebody else stops, or I can wait at the curb until traffic has stopped moving. In the interest of safety, I tend to take the latter course of action. This, however, tends to annoy the drivers who were nice enough to stop for me in the first place, and sometimes they just give up waiting for other people to be considerate and just start driving again. The cycle starts anew.

The above occurrence is common, but thankfully the least dangerous of my experiences. On one memorable occasion, a car had stopped to let my friend and I cross the road, and by a happy coincidence no traffic was coming from the other direction. We stepped out into the street, within the lines of the crosswalk. As we did, another car drove around the car that had stopped and nearly ran into us. The woman driving was talking on her cell phone at the time, and after nearly hitting us, gave us the middle finger and sped off.

I wish I could say that was the first and only time I'd nearly been hit by a driver who couldn't think outside of their shiny metal box.

A lot of drivers get into their cars and don't think much beyond the confines thereof. They know the basic rules of the road, but have a selfish tendency to not care about consequences so long as they themselves don't get hurt. A car hitting a pedestrian isn't likely to hurt the driver, after all. A car hitting another car, though, will hurt, and drivers will thus pay more attention to other drivers.

Which isn't an unreasonable point of view. It becomes unreasonable, however, when they pay attention to other drivers to the exclusion of all else that goes on around them.

Just imagine what might have happened had I not been an adult with decent enough reflexes to stop and jump back before the car drove into me. What if I had been a child, a beloved pet, someone on crutches who couldn't move as easily? Injury or even death could have occurred in that situation.

I'm fairly certain that the driver in question wouldn't have given the finger to a prone and bleeding body on the road and then driven off without a second thought. But it shouldn't have to take such dire circumstances to make people aware of the fact that their actions can have severe consequences.

When I'm in a car with somebody, I often make a point to pay attention to how they drive. Sometimes I find an unpleasant amount of hypocrisy from drivers in regards to their driving habits. Many drivers seem very quick to criticize the mistakes of others, and equally as quick to dismiss their own mistakes. One person I know, who will remain nameless for the sake of privacy, will frequently curse and shout at people who use their blinkers at the very last moment when turning corners, but smiles and waves off criticism when I point out that she just ran a red light. "There was no one around," she'll say. "Nobody caught me." An oops and a giggle and her transgression is completely forgotten.

So long as nobody got hurt, or nobody with the power to punish her actually saw the mistake, then to her, there was no problem. I can't help but wonder how many people actually saw her mistakes and sat in their cars quietly cursing at her for them, but who will also wave away their own mistakes when the time comes.

This same person, while not paying much attention to where she was going, also nearly drove into a group of girls who were crossing a parking lot, and then proceeded to yell at them (inside the safety of her car, mind, where nobody other than she and I could hear) because they had been, and I quote, "walking too slowly."

I wonder too how many of the people who didn't pay enough attention and nearly hit me were driving away and cursing at me where I couldn't hear them, fully believing that I was at fault for trying to walk where they wanted to drive.

When someone is issued a driver's license, it is supposed to prove that they know how to drive safely and are aware of the rules of the road. Sadly, all it really proves is that they followed the rules just long enough to get their licenses. Much like the people who graduate high school and cheerfully brag that they no longer have to remember anything they learned, these people do not actually demonstrate what they were trained to know.

Driving is a great responsibility, one that a lot of people take for granted and don't take as seriously as they ought to. You are responsible for yourself and your vehicle. By accepting that responsibility, you are making a commitment to pay attention to your surroundings, to take care in what you're doing, to follow the laws, and to take responsibility for your own actions.

There is much more to driving than knowing how to operate a vehicle.