Further to my last on traffic...

[desperance]

Just to expand the image of how things are around here:

I've been to visit a couple of friends, with their charming granddaughter; and I'm walking home feeling that all is right with the world, when I encounter this car. It's being driven by a teenager in a local soccer strip, and I assume that the woman in the passenger seat is his mother, by her sour expression; and she's holding a leash, and outside the car is the dog on the other end of the leash, and he's running alongside.

And I have no idea which of them it was who thought this would be a good idea, around city streets in city traffic; but I cannot conceive of the mindset, because it is dangerously stupid and stupidly dangerous, both at once and both for the dog and for everyone else trying to drive around 'em. And I walk home entirely gobsmacked, and am now here and still gobsmacked, and...

Comments

[bookzombie.livejournal.com]

Okay, that's the nearest I've been to speechless for a long time.

You know, every so often I'm reminded that my friends and I are among the brighter inhabitants of the planet...

[martyn44.livejournal.com]

Come out into the country and see them do without the leash!

Observed on Wednesday afternoon out near Hartburn, farmer of the female persuasion on quad bike - no helmet of course- and two sheepdogs perched on the back mudguards.

No, of course they weren't wearing helmets either.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

...Or of course go to Taipei and see the paterfamilias astride his scooter, with wife and several children - plus all their shopping - squished up behind him and the family dog in the footwell. (And no, the dog is not lunch. Not in Taiwan. In Korea, you might be justified in asking, but that's a whole nother issue...)

[farwing.livejournal.com]

Wow. People are really stupid. (Some chick paid by debit card today and instead of entering her PIN into the keypad she just *told* me her PIN. I scolded her but good, and she said she hadn't seen the keypad and that she was going to change the PIN right away anyway. I still wanted to slap her for being stupid.)

[samarcand.livejournal.com]

Ah, the joys of West End Chavas.... (Not that they are any different to East End or Central ones, of course.)

I

[samarcand.livejournal.com]

For some reason that last post got truncated.

I was going to say that I got sworn at by a cyclist who was cycling on the pavement on Wednesday afternoon. I was coming down a cycle path and stopping at a pedestrian/cycle crossing. He was coming along the pavement and got stopped by me. When he asked me to move I replied that I couldn't because there was traffic in the way. He then said that I should have waited for him to go past. As this was just after reading your first post about cyclicts on pavements, I replied that I didn't see why I should as what he was doing was illegal. To which his intelligent reply was 'fuck off. I'll smash your face in."
Fortunately, by this time the light had changed so I was able to cycle on and ignore him.

This wasn't actually an East End Chava, but one of the older generation of people who would have been Chavas if born at the right time.

The joys of people, basically.