Eyes on the Street: Hey Driver, Look, I Got the Light!

Photos: Bryan Goebel

The one-way traffic sewers around my neighborhood on Sutter Street in the Tendernob (aka Lower Nob Hill) encourage speeding, so as you can imagine, there are constant near-misses by drivers intent on ignoring the pedestrian right-of-way. What you see in the photo above happened Monday evening on Sutter Street at Jones, as I was taking a leisurely stroll through one of the densest neighborhoods on the West Coast.  

An impatient young SUV driver trying to go left onto Jones boils over with anger, throwing his hands up behind the wheel, as a pedestrian, a man who looked like a senior from my vantage point, slowly crosses the street in the crosswalk and points to the green light to illustrate to the driver that he has the right-of-way. The driver, as cranky as he was, did eventually let the man cross before he screeched down Jones Street.

These photos make me angry and sad. I look forward to the day when our traffic engineers and political leaders can begin to seriously rethink one-way arterials. Let's breath life back into our streets instead of noise, pollution and carnage.

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