THE RIGHT (LEFT) SIDE
It makes me crazy, as I drive or bike around the East End, to see so many walkers, runners, strollers, moms/nannies pushing baby carriages, sometimes two or three abreast, on the right side of narrow shoulderless tree-lined and therefore shadowy roads – Stony Hill Road in East Hampton comes to mind -- which is the wrong side of the road for them. Their backs are to the traffic. Often they’re on their cells; if not, they’re listening to their iPods, as I bear down on them. Often it’s twilight. Often they’re wearing dark clothing. Come on, people! Don’t you want at least a fighting chance at surviving an encounter with a motorist who is blinded by the sun or the darkness or fiddling with his own phone or music player?
When I come up on a hapless pedestrian, though I know it stamps me instantly as a curmudgeon who is to be either ignored or given the finger, occasionally I can't resist the urge to slow down and try to reason with the 16-year-old girl or the portly middle-aged fellow inches from my right fender. “Safer to run facing traffic!” I’ll yell through my lowered passenger-side window. The other day when I did this, a woman pushing a stroller gave me a thoughtful look, said “Thanks,” and, I watched her cross to the left side in my rear-view mirror. I was so happy, I almost ran down a runner a hundred feet further on.
See? the road to hell (or at least traffic fatalities) is paved with good intentions. Or perhaps it's paved with the bodies of those who traveled on the wrong side of the road.
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