Today I walked the three blocks to the post office to mail a package, then on the way back home stopped at the deli across the street from my apartment building to buy a delicious turkey-bacon sub for my lunch.
The short jaunt reminded me of one of the peculiar things about Las Vegas: Compared to everyplace else I've ever lived, people here are unusually deferential to the "walk" and "don't walk" signs. Whether the traffic light is red or green, if the "don't walk" sign is lit, people will just stop and wait, even if there are no cars for blocks in any direction! If they arrive as the "don't walk" is just beginning, they'll patiently stand there through the rest of that green, then through the entire red, and only cross the street when they get the "walk" signal again. You can see large masses of people doing this, with none of them breaking out of the herd, when none of them would be in even the smallest degree of danger by violating the command from Big Brother.
Me? Well, maybe it comes from having grown up in a university-dominated town, where anarchy reigned, but my philosophy about it is that they haven't yet invented a set of traffic signs that can determine when it is safe to cross better than I can. Until they do, I'll rely on my own senses. Sometimes that means not walking when I'm being told it's OK (because of, say, a left-turner that is ignoring the presence of pedestrians), and sometimes that means walking when it tells me not to (because waiting would be an act of futility, a deference to authority with no useful purpose).
My experience is that if I set the precedent by going against the light, a few stragglers will recover from their momentary shock and follow me across, but the majority will stay back on the curb, awaiting instructions from the lights.
The above is true for most areas of the city. It does not apply to the Strip, where pedestrians, in the places where they are not forced onto overhead crosswalks and therefore still compete for the same space as the cars, use their massive numbers to clog up any intersection they can, for as long as they can get away with it.
As for the rest of the city, though, I still haven't figured out what has induced this mass yielding of the will to the automated signs. I've never seen it before.
The short jaunt reminded me of one of the peculiar things about Las Vegas: Compared to everyplace else I've ever lived, people here are unusually deferential to the "walk" and "don't walk" signs. Whether the traffic light is red or green, if the "don't walk" sign is lit, people will just stop and wait, even if there are no cars for blocks in any direction! If they arrive as the "don't walk" is just beginning, they'll patiently stand there through the rest of that green, then through the entire red, and only cross the street when they get the "walk" signal again. You can see large masses of people doing this, with none of them breaking out of the herd, when none of them would be in even the smallest degree of danger by violating the command from Big Brother.
Me? Well, maybe it comes from having grown up in a university-dominated town, where anarchy reigned, but my philosophy about it is that they haven't yet invented a set of traffic signs that can determine when it is safe to cross better than I can. Until they do, I'll rely on my own senses. Sometimes that means not walking when I'm being told it's OK (because of, say, a left-turner that is ignoring the presence of pedestrians), and sometimes that means walking when it tells me not to (because waiting would be an act of futility, a deference to authority with no useful purpose).
My experience is that if I set the precedent by going against the light, a few stragglers will recover from their momentary shock and follow me across, but the majority will stay back on the curb, awaiting instructions from the lights.
The above is true for most areas of the city. It does not apply to the Strip, where pedestrians, in the places where they are not forced onto overhead crosswalks and therefore still compete for the same space as the cars, use their massive numbers to clog up any intersection they can, for as long as they can get away with it.
As for the rest of the city, though, I still haven't figured out what has induced this mass yielding of the will to the automated signs. I've never seen it before.
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1 comment:
I'm guessing it's a result of proximity to California, where pedestrian jaywalking laws are enforced with draconian severity (at least they used to be).
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