Roundup Editorial Staff
There is so much more blood than you thought there would be, and you are fading fast as people start to gather around you.
Only a moment ago, you were jamming out on your iPod and status-updating on Facebook. Now you are laying face up in a crosswalk after being struck by one of the thousands of vehicles zooming around Pierce College.
Congratulations, you are dead.
You were in the crosswalk. You had the right-of-way. You are dead. The driver didn’t stop when they should have. They could go to jail. You are still dead.
You willingly gave up the use of your most valuable defensive weapons (your eyes and ears) in a location that commands your attention; you never saw it coming.
According to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, a pedestrian is injured every eight minutes in this country. Every two hours, one dies. This time it’s you.
Remember how mommy told you to look both ways? She was doing what mammals worldwide do: nurture the self-preservation instinct of their offspring.
See, now you’ve let your mom down.
Relax. This isn’t actually you. This is what could happen though, if you don’t look up from that cell phone once in a while.
It would be a shame for an equally unaware student to drive around the parking lot dragging you under their car because your severely overactive sense of entitlement dictates that you walk in slow motion down the middle of every street on campus.
Every day, students walk the streets here like they are strolling down the Mall.
It’s a paved road, complete with automobiles.
Contrary to popular opinion, there is a hierarchy of dominance at work here that must be respected; 2000 plus pounds of moving vehicle and 200 pounds of walking student should never, ever meet.
With all the frustrated drivers searching for an empty spot, even the should-be-safe parking lots are scary if you’re paying attention.
Here at Pierce, we have laws that regulate traffic speed and pedestrian rights.
Painted lines, signs and lights do draw attention to the dangers, but you still have a responsibility to pay attention to all these attention-getting schemes.
The folks who put up the crosswalks had your best interests in mind when they did it. It is the same with those who laid out the sidewalks.
These are the safest, most regulated sections of the otherwise not-so pedestrian-friendly roads here on campus. Why must you insist on putting yourselves in so much danger?
If the blood and guts, the logical presentation and the mommy reference has yet to open your mind to the possibility that you too might be a discourteously oblivious pedestrian, perhaps you aren’t one after all. Good for you.
There’s no easy solution for this issue, save for that rudimentary understanding of our susceptibility to being smashed by big moving things like the ones your mother drilled into you while you were still in diapers.
That understanding is what you must re-engage. It begets the proper amount of respect, like one should always give the ocean or a mother grizzly bear. No sense of entitlement excuses complacency. Being in the crosswalk does not promise safety.
You must take up the cause of your own safety, especially while on campus. The false sense of security displayed is both ill advised and dangerous.
Pick up your head and look around, because how it happens and why it happens-even whose fault it ends up being¬—is academic. If a vehicle hits you, you stand an excellent chance of dying.
Kindly unplug your headphones, plug in your senses and get back on the sidewalk.
Maria Salvador / Roundup (Maria Salvador / Roundup)