Traffic Rant # 1

Beep.

So I’m strolling down 22nd, in downtown Saskatoon, and something strange is going on. I’m one of the few who notice.

Beep. Beep.

It’s like specks in your vision, those little transparent “floaters” that drift across your field of view unnoticed, all day every day. Only when you focus on them do you ever see them at all. At this particular moment, the speck for me most demanding attention was a sound instead of a sight.

Beep, beeeep!

All right, already, what is it? I look up, wondering if I’ve been spotted by one of my many adoring fans (yeah, right). No such luck. Instead, I see a young woman in a small car with a big horn, waiting to turn left onto 2nd. She can’t, due to the even younger man in the car in front of her.

He’s waiting for a break in the traffic, but when one comes, he doesn’t turn. Beep. What up? What’s the matter with this kid? Another gap in the stream, and again he doesn’t move. Beep! Soon the lights will turn, and the offending youth still won’t have. What’s the lady to do? Oh, the humanity!

The reason he did not turn was partly because of me.

I was, at the time, crossing the street, along with many others. Had he started his turn—as I’m certain the driver behind him would have—he would have had to stop halfway through. There ‘d be in mid-turn, blocking any fresh traffic coming the other way. And for what, exactly?

What this young man knew not to do is one of the most basic premises of driving:  you don’t turn left into traffic. That’s all traffic, including the pedestrian kind. In most cities I’ve lived in or travelled to, that’s considered obvious, common sense.

Sadly, the lady driver in question is much more representative of the typical Saskatoon driver. Many motorists in Saskatoon will make that turn, stopping only when they get close—maybe dangerously so—to the line of pedestrians before them. Then they will sit, angled before oncoming traffic, looking genuinely surprised. “What the— Where did those come from?” No kidding at all, some actually manage to look annoyed.

Good grief, Saskatoon.

I’ll not suggest that we have a monopoly on bad driving habits. In fact, I recall reading the results of a study a couple of years back, which showed the worst drivers in the nation to be in metro Toronto. By comparison, Saskatchewan drivers came in middle-of-the-road (and not necessarily because we drive there). But people, please...can we do some growing up?

Saskatoon is getting bigger, and with the provincial economy doing so well, that will likely continue. It’s time to stop behaving as if we all just tumbled in from the fields. Increasingly, every space we move through will already have people in it. That’s just the way it is;  let’s all learn to deal with it.

By holding his ground, the young man who waited to turn demonstrated just a degree of that mystical something-or-other that we seem to need more of in this town. Something the woebegone driver behind him sorely lacked.

I think they call it sophistication.