It's a good thing we don't get too many jackasses speeding down our street
By adamg - 9/5/10 - 6:59 pm
As we went out late this afternoon to pick up some food, we had to wait for a couple of moments to turn the car around because two woman were pushing urban assault strollers right down the middle of the street. Apparently, the sidewalks were too narrow for them to push their wide loads side by side to let them chat, so they decided to amble down a narrow street with curves and no sight lines.
Comments
I call them 'Baby Plows',
I call them 'Baby Plows', because they just take up entire sidewalks. The three-wides are especially good at pushing pedestrians into the street.
I no longer move for them.
I no longer move for them. I'll risk bruised shins/knees instead of sacrificing my pride for self-absorbed sows living under the illuion that they're the Most Important People Ever.
Bonus points if I'm smoking a cigarette when they realize that, not only am I not jumping into the street or scaling a building to let them continue their obnoxious behavior, but I'm an Evil Polluter of the Imaginary Bubble of Pure and Magical Air they believe surrounds their hellspawn.
The only thing I hate more than children is the parents of children.
The coda is what I learned from the Japanese: the apologetic insult. I always smile sweetly and say, "I'm sorry, I guess I'm even less aware of my surroundings today than you are! My apologies."
Someone needs to go up a size
Someone needs to go up a size in the tighty-whiteys.
C'mon! He's gotta *graduate* to tightly whities, first.
Anybody that juvenile is still wearing Spiderman undies!
Perhaps a little extreme.
Nevertheless very funny. The only thing missing is to cause the cell phones to overheat and fizzle out when said Most Important People on the Earth are yammering on while pushing their baby carriages in the middle of the street.
Easy solution
I love it when problems come with their own solutions.
Like I always say
When I become attorney general, I'll bring child endangerment charges against ANYBODY who walks their child into the street against traffic.
Sometimes ..
You don't have a choice. There are places without sidewalks and some people do not have access to cars.
That said, I remember people who did things like this with their kids, yet they would insist that they HAD to stay in the strollers (versus walk) at very old-for-stroller ages because they might run out in the street! And heaven forfend they even walk to school by themselves in a quiet neighborhood when they were bigger - somebody might grab them!
Snow
I freely admit that I've pushed a stroller a whole block down a street. In that case 80% of homeowners opted to not shovel snow off their sidewalks. Thanks. Okay okay, what was I doing with a stroller in that case, but sometimes the kid wouldn't fall asleep.
People shouldn't do this.
People shouldn't do this. Strollers and old ladies in the street because the sidewalks or curb cuts weren't cleared... DO get hit.
Totally with you on this
I also really wish the public health commission would do a PSA about how pedestrians don't have the right of way everywhere they think they do, what the big red hand means, etc. They do PSAs about not dropping your kids out of the window, so why not this?
(And yes, what Swirly said, there are totally places in this area where the sidewalk isn't wide enough for a normal-sized stroller, let alone a wheelchair, or has telephone poles along the middle of the sidewalk, but there are also way too many people with and without strollers who have just stopped trying to use sidewalks anywhere and who take their sweet time getting out of the way when cars show up. I imagine these people are from the demographic of people who think that pedestrians have the right of way everywhere no matter what.)
Brainstorm
I bet the best way to educate the public that pedestrians don't always have the right of way would be to have monthly walks where we hold up traffic.
Nice!
Except, wouldn't it be monthly drives? ;o)
Will, did your mother force
Will, did your mother force you to stay inside while all the kids were playing kickball in the middle of the street?
Uh, no
Hell, I organized the street kickball. Not that many kids, though...the era of kids getting off their ass and getting outside was long gone by 1994.
I see an opportunity for Mini (bmw)
Urban assault strollers came about during the minivan and SUV craze, right? I think Mini should license their brand out to a line of reasonable-sized strollers. Because good sense alone doesn't seem to work.
When we were children, strollers were no larger than they had to be. Babies are kind of small, anyway, and who wants to fold an urban assault stroller to take it on a train or up an escalator?
And also, because children are generally small in stature, they don't need enormous cars to carry them around in, am I right?
One would think
What you said does apply to strollers - and I have noticed a trend away from the SUV strollers in the city because they just don't fit anyplace.
That said, I own a minivan and they are highly efficient when travel involves multiple people and stuff. Ours only goes about 8-10K miles per year, and very very few of those miles involve a solo driver. We usually have at least three or four or even six or seven people packed in. Or $2500 in Ikea cabinets for an entire kitchen. Or several sheets of drywall carried flat. They are much more fuel and people hauling efficient than SUVs are too. We had a small wagon before that, and kept it for 12 years but it died and our boys were seriously outgrowing the back seat (my husband is 6'2" tall and had to have the seat too far back to fit their legs).
The reason "small"people don't fit in a small car: enormous car seats. If you have more than two kids - sometimes only two small kids - it is difficult to find a back seat large enough to make it work. It is very difficult to find seats that are even as small as the ones we had for our now teen boys anymore - and the age requirements for them just keep going up.
Did car seats get bigger, too?
I understand there's a practical use for larger cars. My parents bought into the mini-van craze in 1984 - a 4 cyl Plymouth Voyager. Before that, they managed to fit three kids in a Volkswagen Dasher just fine! (remember those?)
It's probably why I refuse to drive a mini-van today, even though I need to haul around audio/PA gear a lot. So, I got a 4 cyl Honda Element. No Carpet. Seats fold up. But, it only seats four and probably isn't as kid friendly. Otherwise, it's the smallest vehicle I can get away with. My other option is to get a sketchy panel van...because..you know.. I can't get myself to consider a mini-van. I'm sure there was a generation that felt that way about station wagons.
So.. I understand that safer is better, but is bigger-everything always safer?
Minivans aren't bigger
Mine is a Mazda MPV, which is actually shorter than a Mazda 6 and qualifies as a compact. It is actually smaller - in both width and length - than my MIL's Camry. Unlike the Camry or the sedan, we can throw a couple bikes in the back and still get 4-5 people in too.
You might also consider a Mazda 5, which has sliding doors and flexible seating, but is smaller. My dad bought one, actually, even though he's older. He can haul stuff or carry up to six people or whatever he needs to do.
I'd absolutely have an Element if I didn't have the kids! Sleep in the back? Fit lots of stuff? Hose out the sand? I don't understand carpeting in minivans, anyway!
pedestrians cross the street - these people are in the street
where i live they are in the street all the time. Kids play in the street with and without bikes, and rather than the adults teaching them to move aside at least if a vehicle comes, they stand like guards and won't move, and curse you if you go over 5 mph. I always feel like they must be thinking kid for sale or something? Why else would you take the time to have one, devote your life to one, only to put it out there in traffic? I'm not quite sure. My son who is grown now, resents it terribly that he was brought up with a great deal of respect for the road and what should be on it, and yet we need to make allowances to try to keep peace in a neighborhood that which they want control - peace is hardly part of it! When they are ready to head out, they slide into the suv's whoever is left waiting the longest needing to honk the horn repeatedly and then totally fly out of here....inside their vehicle apparently yet again, they can do what they want without regard for anyone else.
I certainly don't hate kids
I certainly don't hate kids but c'mon...there are MANY people (well, 99% chicks) who use children / kids as props to get special / preferential treatment. They have a powerful sense of entitlement. It is what it is.
This is what they made horns for
.
Strollers
Were these single-kid strollers or doubles? If it was single kid strollers, there is no excuse. Even the biggest fit on a sidewalk. If they were side by side doubles, its a tougher call, especially in Roslindale where our trees provide lovely shade but were planted during a time when no one (a) cared about people being able to use the sidewalk or (b) ever imagined that they might grow to take up the entire sidewalk. I am guilty on occassion of having to walk into the street with our double because the sidewalk is either too narrow or has been wrenched up so much by a tree that its impassable with any stroller.
I think they were wide singles
There actually are spots on our sidewalks where the cutouts for trees and utility poles make it impossible for two strollers to go side-by-side (there's one right where our property ends and our neighbor's driveway begins). Gotta love some of the older parts of the neighborhood!
Here, too
We have a few places in my neighborhood where there are poles in the middle of the sidewalk and/or trees that have taken over the sidewalk. Still, some people are reasonable about navigating such things and others aren't. There's one wheelchair user I see who has an electric chair and will travel slowly in the middle of the street, sometimes stopping to talk at people or answer his phone or whatnot, and won't ever pull over to let cars pass. Then there are the people who will stop in their manual chair in the middle of a tough hill to scoot over and let you by, the people with screaming strollers who will move over the second a car comes along, etc.
jeezis
I like to gripe as much as the next person, but Christ! It's a good thing this list isn't responsible for negotiating peace between Israeli govt and the Palestinians. We apparently can't even fucking handle walking around town, driving on roads which bikes also frequent, having tv's in store windows removed, reading articles about our alma maters that make us feel bad, or the fact that the world is full of people who do/say stupid things that we don't like/agree with.
A toungue in cheek rant about some little pestering daily annoyance that everyone shares is one thing, but getting morally outraged about losing a second's time or having to witness something you just don't think is right is really tiresome to hear. Heaven forbid someone puts non-dairy creamer in your fucking coffee.
Now I could understand the holocaust-level outrage if we were talking about something like the Red Sox, but come on people, let's have some perspective here!