AJC > Sandy Springs > Blog > Archives > 2005 > September > 26
Monday, September 26, 2005
Jaywalking makes Roswell Road more dangerous
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When my parents bought their home in Sandy Springs in 1962, Roswell Road was not yet the road into the seventh-circle of hell.
There was no Perimeter, and once you drove north on Roswell Road past Abernathy you were headed into country.
At the intersection of Roswell and Johnson Ferry was a small grocery store with an old wooden screen door that pulled shut with a spring attached, a cooler full of RC Colas buried in chipped ice and hardwood floors.
It was a simpler time in this great and God-fearing little hamlet, and navigating the road was no big deal.
Now dealing with Roswell Road is right up there with putting your head between your legs and running backward into a brick wall. It’s a stretch of asphalt cursed by traffic lights that seem as though they were timed to create gridlock. The days of drivers with a “live-and-let-liveâ€? attitude has been replaced by “get out of my way or die.â€? Not to mention liberal use of the middle finger.
And now we have another phenomenon to stress over, that being the new breed of jaywalkers. These aren’t the people who make a made dash against the light on occasion; these are people who don’t grasp that their bones are no match for a car fender. Or don’t care.
These people look for an opening and stroll out into the middle of the road, planting their feet on the center line, waiting for traffic on the other side to ease up enough for them to saunter on by, even though there is a crosswalk a block away.
Even worse are the groups who pull this stunt. But the ones who scare me the most are the parents who have a baby in their arms and a toddler by the hand while they make their way across the road.
Add to the danger presented by jaywalking pedestrians are the legions of SUV-driving, cigarette-smoking, cell-phone talking, Starbucks-drinking drivers who are attempting to set new land-speed records as they motor from one place to another.
I don’t know if the police really do have quotas to meet in terms of writing tickets, but an ambitious officer could walk from Johnson Ferry down to the Perimeter and write enough citations to keep traffic courts open 24/7.
I have a buddy who lives in New York City, where the least-trod sections of street are the crosswalks. As he’d dart across the busy Manhattan avenues he’d always tell me: “Remember, according to the law the pedestrian always has the right of way.â€? Like that phrase offered some magical field of protection.
There’s not much comfort to be found in the intensive care unit at Northside Hospital and hearing your doctor say: “Both your legs are broken, your pelvis was crushed, you have five cracked ribs, a punctured lung and a fractured skull.
“Thank God you had the right of way.�
