A Modest Proposal- Jaywalkers

I don't know if it's living by UNLV, or living in a borderline ghettoish area, but I can't help but notice the disturbing large numbers of people who jaywalk. People continually jet across the street, assuming that everyone will slam on their brakes for them. Scared drivers do, but I've heard it enough times on the police scanners where they didn't have enough time. There are so many "auto-ped" incidents in this town, it's ridiculous. Some die, some don't, but the impact on the person, and the driver, is huge. Can you imagine the therapy one has to go through if they hit a person, especially if that person died?

I've decided that jay-walkers have a blatant disregard for their lives if they can't walk the extra two hundred feet to the safety of a cross-walk. And the parent jay-walkers who drag a line of little kids or manically push a stroller in the face of traffic don't love their children enough to be concerned for their safety. I've watched too many people just burst on the road with little kids WITHOUT LOOKING both ways, just because they assume everyone will stop.

There's a story that was in the news a few weeks ago about parents who were ticketed for jaywalking as they walked their kids to school. They're all playing the race card and getting NAACP involved, but the point is, they broke the law AND taught their kids a crappy life lesson.

Now someone who has known me for a bit of time may read this and say "But wait, Kristen, how can you have such animosity towards jaywalkers? Weren't YOU one at one time? Isn't that how, you know, you busted your leg?"

Yes, dear readers with a good memory. When I was 16, I darted across the road to catch my bus and paid dearly for it. A fractured femur that required multiple surgeries over two years, wheelchairs, crutches, physical therapy, delayed license-getting, and no winter fun in Reno after the second surgery. But it could have been much worse. I could have died (and a bunch of witnesses thought I did, funny story I'll have to tell sometime).

Having learned to NEVER do that again, I have come up with a Modest Proposal for jaywalkers. I suggest that jaywalkers all get hit the next time they feel the urge to sprint across the street in the face of traffic. They won't die (sorry to those who were hoping I'd go Johnathan Swift and go for a population-eliminating proposal), but they would get injured enough so they'd have to work for a recovery. A few weeks off school/work with no pay, excruciating physical therapy, crutches/casts, and so on.

This way, jaywalkers learn that they are not invincible and that there are consequences for breaking the law. Drivers won't have to worry about cleaning blood and body parts off their windshields, and police can worry about bigger and badder crimes. I'm tired of hearing my brakes screech and feeling my heart drop down to my stomach on a daily basis, and getting yelled at by the jaywalkers who got worried that I'd hit them!

I'll admit to occasionally meandering across an empty road here and there. But when it comes to MY life and OTHER drivers, I want to have common courtesy. Plus, the extra exercise of walking to a crosswalk can't hurt, right?