So I want to know what's up with this epidemic of idiotic pedestrians. I have no problem with pedestrians in general, but this pattern I've been noticing is a little disconcerting. Recently there have been several (like 25 in the last month) pedestrians walking in the street. Not crossing the street, just walking in it, like parallel to the sidewalk. On top of that, all of these street-walkers have been wearing dark colors and I have encountered all of them at night.
Luckily, I have not killed anyone yet. As far as I can tell, there's nothing wrong with the sidewalk. It's not flooded, it's not littered with dog poop or corpses, there aren't extra hills or even tree roots pushing up unwieldy obstacles. These are just ordinary, run of the mill, averagely kempt sidewalks.
In all of these cases, there has been a line of parked cars between the sidewalk and the moving traffic. The pedestrians walk between the parked cars and the moving traffic. If they come to a stretch where there are no parked cars, they do not veer to the right to be a little more out of the way of giant fast moving hunks of metal, they hold their course about 10 feet from the curb. Sometimes they walk in a group and do not walk single file. Also, less than half of them even bother to turn and look over their shoulder when headlights and car noises approach. How can they possibly know I even see them?
Am I missing something? Sure, pedestrians have the right of way, but that doesn't mean they should assume that everyone is automatically going to give it to them. At some point, someone will not see the darkly clothed group of people walking in the street, and then the sidewalk WILL be littered with corpses.
At some point, these pedestrians are going to learn a nasty and painful lesson. I just hope I'm not the one to accidentally teach it to them.