(HOST) Now that the weather is improving, commentator Deborah Lee Luskin is taking her daily walk again, and she’s wondering what it will take to get drivers to slow down.
(LUSKIN) I’ve lost more than twenty pounds by the side of the road, and I don’t want to find them again. Walking daily is my best defense against an expanding waistline, but walking doesn’t seem so safe anymore.
I live on the outskirts of a small village whose half-mile Main Street has single lane bridges at each end and a speed limit of twenty-five. Nevertheless, cars manage to accelerate to forty in the short stretch between bridges. While it’s tempting to blame flatlanders in their giant SUVs, informal observation indicates that more often than not the speeder drives a car with Vermont plates.
It seems there are drivers as intent on breaking the speed limit as there are walkers like me intent on obeying recommended weight limits. Often, as I walk to the Post Office, I signal, as if I were dribbling a basketball in slow-mo, indicating to drivers to please slow down. Sometimes, they do, but not always. Recently, a passenger in a pickup made an obscene gesture while the driver made his tires squeal. It’s behavior like this that’s discouraged one of my neighbors from walking in the village at all. He lives even closer to the Post Office than I do, but he drives to pick up his mail.
The problem, of course, isn’t limited to my town’s three villages, nor is it just about speeding, but about who has the right-of-way, people or cars. In Brattleboro, where there’s enough traffic to warrant cross-walks, pedestrians who use them are still at risk as oblivious drivers fail to stop. I confess, I’ve occasionally been one of those drivers.
But drivers are not the only ones at fault. Downtown, when I’m behind the wheel, I can anticipate the crosswalks, but not the jay-walkers, who cross in the middle of the street rather than walk to the corner and wait for the light. That’s when I’m likely to roll down my window and grumble about what’s right.
No local issue is more emotionally debated in my town than the problem of speeding. A few years ago, a pedestrian was killed in our town. After the fatality, our Select Board appointed a Traffic Calming Committee. The Committee’s initial suggestion for a stop sign mid-way through the village was nixed by a man who objected to brake noise outside his home. For every remedy, there’s an objection: speed bumps are a nuisance to snow plows; high-tech, automated detectors are budget-busters; the police already have too much else to do. And in this age of shrinking civil liberties, who really wants more police enforcement?
All I really want is be able to walk safely on the side of the road.
The best of the Calming Committee’s initiatives to date involved bright orange traffic cones on Williamsville’s Main Street. For two days, the cones worked brilliantly. Traffic through the village dramatically slowed down. Then someone threw the cones over the bank, and as far as I know, that’s where they remain, right alongside my lost twenty pounds.
Deborah Luskin teaches writing and literature to non-traditional students in hospitals, libraries and prisons throughout Vermont.