My best wishes to you and your family as you work through this…I hope for the best!

I’m amazed at the inattentiveness of drivers. A couple of thoughts:

1) I wonder how much of the pedestrian ignorance issue is from people in deep “auto-pilot”. They drive the same route every day and don’t remember most of the trip.
2) I’ve observed that even the nicest people in the world are complete idiots when they get behind the wheel of an automobile. Some of my favorite people are terrible drivers. What is it about driving a car that changes people?
3) I’ve lived everywhere but the northwest. I’ve noticed people in cities are FAR more likely than people in rural areas to be angry “screw you” type drivers, always in a hurry, all about them. In my experience this type of driver was especially common in southern California (I was once a Californian).
4) Some people can talk on a cell phone and drive. Some people can talk to a passenger and drive. Many drivers, however, can’t handle the slightest distraction, let alone cell phone usage and passengers.
5) The biggest most dangerous distraction I have ever had was a child in a carseat up to about age 6. It’s a wonder this isn’t listed as the reason for more accidents.

Anyway, best wishes on the surgery and recovery for your wife.

Penalties for these kinds of infractions are far too light. Most other crimes that endanger other people’s lives carry much stiffer punishment. Blowing a red light is equivalent to holding a revolver to someone’s head, not knowing if it is loaded, and pulling the trigger.

It’s strange that only but …well, it’s probably been a decade now, there was a Seattle Times editorial that spoke about how this visiting guy observed someone at 1AM in the middle of Seattle downtown actually wait for a crosswalk signal before moving with no traffic in sight.

Drivers have consistently been pissing me off, and the few times I come home I find the same is happening there too. People that don’t signal when shifting lanes, don’t stop when it says stop… I mean really. DMV should quit giving these morons licenses since it jeopardizes all the rest of us.

And I drive like a granny.