polite drivers on the stroad

[mindstalk]

I've talked a lot about my local baby stroad, San Pablo, enough that I should start tagging it. 4 lanes of traffic, with local median, meant to be busy and fast. My nearest intersection is a T, I think always green north-south unless the lights detect a westbound car or a pedestrian presses the beg button. It's not so bad. But, unexpectedly, today I didn't have to press the beg button.

I got to the southeast corner and before I could do anything, the northbound traffic stopped. Okay, it was just one car by itself, I got lucky with a polite driver right? Well, I crossed to the median (which has its own beg button), and... both southbound lanes were full, with multiple rows of cars, and yet they still came to a full stop just from my showing up.

Naturally I gave a little wave of thanks and speedwalked across.

(Part of me wants to exert pedestrian dominance and right of way on streets; part of me wants to be polite and help speed everyone along; and part of me just wants to minimize time in front of cars even if they're currently stopped.)

It's not the first time that local drivers have metaphorically crashed to a stop just from my being anywhere nearby, but the other times were on two lane streets in more residential-feeling areas. Not on a stroad! Where the drivers had green lights! WTF.

(Sometimes it's annoying, like if I'm just standing and thinking, and not even oriented so as to cross nor at the curb, and yet they stop because they can see me. Or I do want to cross but I'd rather they get out of the way first, and I have to wave them along or ostentatiously pretend like I'm not crossing.)

Coming back, I crossed at an intersection I don't usually use, which has yield signs; southbound had a huge gap anyway, but northbound had cars that had already stopped for someone else and were obviously still waiting for me too. But that makes more sense, there actually was a yield sign.

Comments

[kgbooklog]

Have you ever wondered what it would look like if someone made a game out of promoting car use?

[mindstalk]

Wow, is that someone's idea of a SimCity parody? Or SimCity without the dishonesty about parking lot sizes?