The Similkameen News Leader
Editorial
March 18, 2008
I GOT'S ME A PET PEEVE
I still joke around with out of town family members and friends that the pace of life in Princeton is such that the half block trip to the post office from the newspaper office often takes a half an hour.
Locals know that it's not because everyone is so slow, but because everyone says hello, and it's easier to get caught in a conversation than a traffic jam on Bridge Street.
Or that is usually the case.
Recently I've noticed in my twice daily trip to the post office that crossing Bridge Street is getting tricky, competitive, awkward and dangerous.
When I hardly used to look both ways before crossing, I now look back and forth frequently and step out into the crosswalk nervously. Often I just stand in the middle of the crosswalk to watch a vehicle drive by me as if I wasn't there.
I seem to recall that a pedestrian has the right of way once they leave the sidewalk and set foot on the roadway at a painted crossing. I didn't realize that rule had changed and crossing Bridge Street had turned into a sport where pedestrians earned drivers extra points with the values increased by the type of collision and severity of the injuries. I said video games were a bad idea all along.
From the number of close calls I've encountered I sometimes wonder what the rush is all about. It's not like there's a sale on downtown that'll end in the next 15-seconds, or clipping me in the crosswalk is going to get you into the Bonus Round.
I'm trying to figure out a way to blame it on the recent revelation that the high percentage of non-compliance to seatbelt usage in Princeton is related to the number of
'redneck' drivers in the area, but I'm not so sure that's far off the mark.
By the way, my dictionary defines a redneck as a "working-class white person, especially a politically reactionary one from a rural area" so you may catch my drift after all.
So maybe if we can educate drivers to understand that the crosswalk is actually the safest way for the chicken to get to the other side of the road, we'd all forget what the big rush was to get to the end of Bridge Street just to wait in line for someone else to get across the wooden bridge.
If we all went a little slower and paid attention to what's going on around us we'd all be able to get in touch with our inner redneck and get through the cross walk either on foot or in a car.
