So I’m walking to an evening class at a local college, it’s dark. There’s a bend just before the junction and as I’m walking across a car comes round way too fast. I had to step back to avoid being hit. I was wearing gloves and as it went past I hit it, no idea why, just instinct and anger.
I carry on walking and I see the driver has pulled over a bit down the road, I was expecting a “sorry are you ok” but she instead shouted “did you just hit my car?”. That set me off, shouting at her that she almost fucking ran me over. Then she says “you don’t have to use that kind of language”, the fucking nerve.
Gave up and just walked off. Wish I’d have smashed the wing mirror or keyed the car or something.
Has anyone else almost been run over and how do you deal with the anger of it?
Try being homeless in a major city.
When you live on the street, you are never away from idiotic, distracted, drunk, high, pissed off drivers.
Encounters like what you describe become something that happens every few days, even multiple times a day.
You’re extremely lucky if none of them hit you.
You come to hate them.
How dare your existence inconvenience them, even though you are using a crosswalk or crossing legally.
You come to view them as basically natural predators.
No thank you
Here in Seattle, it makes the news every time someone is hit by a car. Most of the time, it’s homeless people walking across the highway. Don’t camp on the highway, people.
No, it absolutely does not.
I was homeless in Seattle for over a year.
And practically nobody camps on the highway, if you mean I5. They camp under it.
If you mean Aurora / Highway 99… sure, lots of people camp right on the sidewalk because its not really a highway within Seattle city limits.
But anyway, yeah, I personally knew a lot of other homeless people that got hit by cars, no media kerfuffle over them.
If you get hit and run, which happens all the time, and you can limp away, basically never gets reported compared to how often that happens.
They still get hit crossing the highway. I live here, you can’t deny reality.
But I believe you that they aren’t always reported.
Yep, homeless people get hit on the highway.
I never said they don’t.
Almost no one camps there, as you said.
Yeah.
And so did I. For over a decade.
…Are you normally this gaslighty with people, putting words in their mouth and then calling them liars, upon being called out on your own lies?
Or do you just reserve that level of disrespect for people who’ve been homeless?
You’re the one putting words in my mouth. I didn’t call you a liar. And I don’t disrespect homeless people. I think it’s awful how often it’s reported that some homeless individual has gotten hit trying to cross the highway. I’ve had to stop on the highway myself when people are trying to cross. It’s an issue. And anyone who drives around here can see tents alongside the highway.