The little red man means it's the traffic's turn

You know I'm convinced that a high percentage of people that visit the city each day either have a death wish, or they're just really, incredibly stupid.

I don't know about you, but the thought of getting hit by a bus, or any type of vehicle for that matter, doesn't really appeal to me. It conjures up thoughts of crunching sounds coming from my body and the loss of certain fluids that are necessary for continued life. Not to mention the excrutiating pain involved when several tonnes of Volvo B10 smacks into you.

The idiot that overtook our bus this morning, then pulled in and stopped to let a passenger off obviously hasn't considered these kind of issues. He certainly didn't seem to understand why our driver blew his horn as we went past.

I guess he thought he was safe in that metal cage of his, something I can't say for the dozens of pedestrians that dice with death not fifty metres from my office window every day.

There's a taxi rank across the road. It's not unusal to see pedestrians standing right in front of the taxis waiting to cross the road (the pedestrians want to cross that is, not the taxis) while the lights are green (for the taxis and cars and buses, etc, not the pedestrians). there's always a look of surprise when they realise that a taxi is starting to pull away and they're standing in front of it.

A couple of weeks ago we were going down Ann Street in the afternoon and a pedestrian waiting to cross was standing right on the corner with his toes right up to the edge of the kerb (or is that curb). He was holding a book in front of him and reading while he waited for the lights to change. As Ann Street is very busy with traffic at that time of day and the lanes aren't particularly wide, his book was in the way of the bus. I like to sit at the front of the bus so I had a good view of what was happening and he was right in front of me.

Anyway, the driver slowed down because he knew he couldn't get past with all the traffic in the next lane. It wasn't until another, smarter, pedestrian pointed out his imminent demise that he took a step back.

This isn't an isolated incident on that road either. A lot of people seem to be in such a hurry that they'll step out into the bus lane in front of us, just to overtake other pedestrians. Then there's the people that will cross a street to the other side where there isn't actually a footpath, so they have to walk ten or twenty metres in front of the traffic before they're safe. To the lady I saw do that down by the river a few weeks ago with her kids, you're a bigger idiot than the guy with the book or the BMW driver this morning.

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An update on my comments about politicians waving at traffic the other day. It seems it's not just the conservative candidates doing it. Our local Labor candidate is doing it too.