Morgan Rinckey: Pedestrian safety is a must

I have been obsessed with my personal safety after watching too much CSI: Las Vegas when I was younger.

One year for Halloween I dressed up as some kind of safety officer/post-apocalyptic garbage woman. I was decked out from head to toe with my dad’s hard helmet, safety goggles, rubber gloves, orange safety vest with reflectors and a purple respirator. This was during the time when adults warned us about razor blades in candy, stranger danger and kids being run over from walking on unlit streets — so don’t judge me, I was more than a little nervous.

And even though I only see my dad using that respirator anymore, I am still concerned with my safety as I walk around — especially around campus.

For those of you who don’t already know — some people are terrible drivers.

I’m a self-proclaimed terrible driver, but that doesn’t mean I don’t abide by the rules of the road. I always do, but there can be problems when you are paying attention to the rules and someone else isn’t.

There are a bunch of crosswalks around the University of Toledo. And if someone doesn’t know what they are doing, it could get dangerous.

I have already almost been hit once on a crosswalk this year. The car was slowing down at the intersection, I started to cross, and we made awkward eye contact as I was almost halfway across the street and then continued to drive leaving me in the center of the crosswalk.

On Secor Road past the intersection at Central Avenue heading towards UT there’s a crosswalk that goes over four lanes of traffic. There is also a flashing yellow light next to a sign to make sure motorists are aware of potential street crossers. But I’ve seen people wait for traffic to pass before they start across, because there is too much traffic and no one abides by the sign.

I need to say this because I’m not sure if everyone knows. At a crosswalk, pedestrians have the right of way. Let me repeat that, pedestrians have the right of way.

It’s nonnegotiable. If there is someone walking, running, cycling or skating, the person in the car, truck, SUV, motorcycle, semi, mo-ped or any other motorized vehicle has to wait for them to cross on the crosswalk.

Did you notice that I said crosswalk and not the street? This is because in the Digest of Ohio Motor Vehicle laws it says on page 71 that, “When not crossing at a crosswalk, the pedestrian must yield the right of way to vehicular traffic.”

So if there isn’t a crosswalk nearby and you cross the street you have to play Frogger and go when cars aren’t going to hit you.

But let’s face it — I jaywalk, you jaywalk, we all jaywalk. If you say you haven’t jaywalked you are probably a liar. If the quickest path from point A to point B is a straight line, sometimes the crosswalk is out of the way.

Yeah, sometimes people are stupid and jaywalk, but that doesn’t mean you are allowed to hit them with your car. So pay attention to people who look like they are going to cross the road.

I know that this may have seemed like rehashing driver’s education, but I really don’t want to die by being hit in a crosswalk. Watch out for pedestrians.

Morgan Rinckey is a second-year double majoring in English and communication, and she is the opinion editor at The Independent Collegian.