I’m delighted to see that NY State Senator Carl Kruger wants to fine pedestrians who walk headlong into traffic because they’re so immersed in the world of their mobile, iPod or Blackberry that they’ve forgotten what traffic is.
Cycling around Wandsworth over the last month, I’ve had more dangerous encounters with pedestrians than cars, and what Kruger describes is spot on – “iPod oblivion”. Far from standing at the kerbside looking right, then left, then right again as the drill used to go, they tend to face diagonally with their back to the traffic coming up behind them and just launch straight out into the road as if the whole world were a pedestrian precinct or a grassy meadow. I get so annoyed by these idiots, I’m tempted to just not swerve or brake, but let them feel the impact of 80 kilos of middle-aged bloke on a piece of fast-moving spiky metal. It annoys me twice as much because I’m a musician – how can you be alert to musical nuances if your ears are permanently attached to an aural drip which drowns out everything else, including sounds which are actually dangerous to you?
When Walkmans first started to proliferate in the 80s, a psychiatrist told me he thought the habit of living with headphones was a form of ‘self-inflicted autism’. The iPod thing is far worse, though I’m not sure why. But take it from me, if you walk around London streets with an iPod or mobile phone stuck like a digital cork in your ear, I reckon you’re an iDiot, a danger to yourself and to the people around you. Get a life, and get out of my way!
I agree – I loathe pedestrians, they irritate me! My most joyous encounter with one was a stupid twit of a girl, chatting on her mobile she stepped out onto the road between still traffic but didn’t notice me filtering to the right of the traffic, I braked swerved, almost lost my footing but the best thing was in her shock she dropped her phone and it smashed – comeuppance!:o)