Look both ways before and during crossing.

Step down off of the curb and stop there.

Start crossing.

Don’t assume that the drivers and their cars will stop. Drivers can be distracted and cars can malfunction.

Watch the cars in oncoming traffic, make eye contact with them and make sure they are stopped before stepping out.

Raise your hand, palm out, to show that you noticed them and to offer a small thanks.

Pay more attention to the real world than a book or the virtual world, when crossing the street, because the real world can and will hit you dead in the face. Literally.

Don’t get me wrong, in no way do I like the idea of or want someone getting hurt, crippled or dead in a vehicle accident.

But.

Didn’t do all that? Congratulations, you might be hurt, crippled or dead. Additionally, if the human race is lucky enough, you’ve just won a Darwin award. Simply because you couldn’t take the time (maybe 30 seconds to a minute, at the most) to save a life.

This is for all the individuals who have been hit crossing a street, especially when they weren’t paying attention to the world around them or any car drivers who have hit someone when they also didn’t pay attention to the world; it looks good on you. Seriously, being that predictably stupid, suicidal/homicidal and overtly uncaring makes you look marvelous.

And for the parents who have been hit, it makes it even better. The reason it is better is because you have probably been teaching your offspring the very rules mentioned above and then you go about proving that those rules really shouldn’t be followed. In essence, you just proved that a supposedly trusted person has been lying to them, especially considering all the other times you have broken those very same rules in their perception.

If you are choosing to do something to increase the odds of killing yourself or of killing someone else on any road, while ignoring the proof showing that such a thing will happen, you are suicidal/homicidal, very violence-minded or just being very predictably stupid (these just had to be repeated). So for any of those reasons, if you are dead, you’ve just slightly gotten rid of someone who is (more than likely) damaging to society’s mental state.

As for the predictable stupidity, thinking that something with a greater, mass density and velocity can violate the laws of physics to stop on a dime or that a force field goes up the minute you step off the curb/hit a crosswalk button really shows your level of knowledge and wisdom, doesn’t it? In essence, you have been doing something thinking that you are immortal and/or invincible.

Uncaring? Guess what? You just proved that you don’t care about your own life, your friends’ and family’s feelings or the lives and feelings of a driver, their friends and their families. Not entirely, of course, just at the time that you might be in a dangerous life threatening situation and since people have died, yes, it is just that. Actually...sorry. That is my error, you do care about them, but probably only virtually. Once again, congratulations. It looks good on you. —futrethink