Surprising skateboarder
Mar. 25th, 2017 08:57 amHalfway along Dow Street in Dundee the road is met by the end of another road. Well, not really another road, it seems more pedestrianized; I'm not sure that cars are even intended to be on it. But, although visibility is poor for those emerging from that unnamed road, I sometimes see a bicyclist emerging from it at considerable speed. My courage does not match theirs so as I drive along Dow Street I am careful to be moving slowly with my foot near the brake pedal.
Yesterday was more surprising than usual: a skateboarder shot out then proceeded slowly directly in front of me for some time. I don't think that they noticed my car until rather further along when they moved off to the opposite sidewalk and looked enough sideways to see behind. They were wearing some kind of headphones.
This kind of behavior leaves me at something of a loss. I could understand it from kindergartners but if not for the frequency with which I see it from adults then I would have thought it would take a rare kind of idiocy to be in the habit of emerging so abruptly from blind intersections onto roads.
I didn't mind this incident: I wasn't in a great hurry and it was so bizarre to be slowly following this clueless guy as to be almost amusing. I didn't want to sound my horn lest I surprised the fellow so much that he fell. But I would rather if nobody at that part of the road were to be unpleasantly squashed. Perhaps on Monday I shall take a walk to see what warning signs meet those reaching Dow Street at that point.
Dow Street is on the University of Dundee's city campus, this intersection being just past where the Life Sciences Research Complex takes its larger deliveries. I did learn to hate driving on college campuses in the US: they seemed especially to attract pedestrians who like to wander around with no apparent acknowledgment that roads or cars even exist on their path rather than, for example, upon reaching a road pausing a moment to look around and make eye contact with oncoming drivers.
Yesterday was more surprising than usual: a skateboarder shot out then proceeded slowly directly in front of me for some time. I don't think that they noticed my car until rather further along when they moved off to the opposite sidewalk and looked enough sideways to see behind. They were wearing some kind of headphones.
This kind of behavior leaves me at something of a loss. I could understand it from kindergartners but if not for the frequency with which I see it from adults then I would have thought it would take a rare kind of idiocy to be in the habit of emerging so abruptly from blind intersections onto roads.
I didn't mind this incident: I wasn't in a great hurry and it was so bizarre to be slowly following this clueless guy as to be almost amusing. I didn't want to sound my horn lest I surprised the fellow so much that he fell. But I would rather if nobody at that part of the road were to be unpleasantly squashed. Perhaps on Monday I shall take a walk to see what warning signs meet those reaching Dow Street at that point.
Dow Street is on the University of Dundee's city campus, this intersection being just past where the Life Sciences Research Complex takes its larger deliveries. I did learn to hate driving on college campuses in the US: they seemed especially to attract pedestrians who like to wander around with no apparent acknowledgment that roads or cars even exist on their path rather than, for example, upon reaching a road pausing a moment to look around and make eye contact with oncoming drivers.