I’ve been really enjoying my new habit of biking to work – there’s something refreshing about being out first thing in the morning when the air is cool and the traffic is minimal. Plus, it crosses exercise off the list of daily tasks without me having to go out of my way.
As a result of doing this commute so frequently, I became more familiar with the various intersections that I encounter. And there’s one particular road with vehicle traffic in both directions, while also featuring a bike and pedestrian crossing. For anyone that wants to cross, it’s very simple – each side has a dedicated button that can be pressed.
Those are some powerful buttons, I tell you. If you press one of those buttons, immediately, cars in both directions get a yellow traffic light, and shortly thereafter, they’re stuck at a red light. Pedestrians and cyclists have about 30 seconds to cross. This, of course, is super convenient – usually, the pedestrian crossing buttons at normal intersections allow you to indicate your presence, but then it waits a bit for an opportune moment – you may have to wait a bit for cars to have their respective turns before you get to cross. At this particular intersection, there’s usually no waiting – cars have to stop, now.
So whenever I get to this intersection, I am acutely aware that with great power comes great responsibility. It would be so easy for me to press that button and to casually force a few tons worth of vehicles to stop, and believe me, I did that the first few times. Lately, however, I’ve been doing something else.
Put simply, I look for a gap. I played Frogger when I was younger – I figure that I had a pretty good sense on how to not be run over. So instead of going for that button immediately, I pause at the intersection and look at the incoming traffic. Usually, I only have to wait about 5-10 seconds before I can find myself a generous gap, and I can cross the street safely without the button. The way I see it, it takes me 5-10 seconds, but it saves 30 seconds for every single car – in both directions – that would have otherwise been stopped if I had given into the easiest solution.
That made me think. I do this quite intentionally and carefully, but for the people who are just driving to work, I don’t know that they actually understand the depth of it. For all they know, it was a coincidence. But I know that if I drove by, knowing the behavior of the traffic lights, I would understand what may have transpired – and the intention at play. It would also give me a good starting sense of how that person might operate, overall, though it’s too minute of a detail to be conclusive.
The point is, the details really matter in my book. For example, consider the most memorable costume I saw at Dragon*Con 2010:
[She] was not only dressed as American McGee’s Alice. Instead, she was dressed as a mutated form of American McGee’s Alice. This mutation occurred perhaps only 3-4 times throughout the whole campaign, and it happened when you found a specific “Ragebox” power-up. Anyone can dress up as American McGee’s Alice, and it could look cool… but her mutated form? Awesome.
It takes a special kind of person to do something so intentionally specific, knowing full well that it would be properly recognized by perhaps 1% of the audience. To me, holding back from pressing the crossing signal precisely to spare others the delay, that’s the same type of detail – though the recognition aspect of it is irrelevant.
All of that said, as I was writing this post, I had the distinct feeling that I was maybe missing something. I had this instinct to go back and check the intersection and to look again. And when I did, boy, did I ever discover something important: a ghost bike.
Someone had lost their life at that intersection.
That button wasn’t powerful by accident – it was a deliberate attempt to prevent a similar tragedy from re-occurring at that location. As someone who valued details, I had missed something absolutely crucial. This was humbling. Not to mention that it also made my Frogger reference take on a new light, as if I thought it was a game, that it should have been easy to survive. Clearly, this was not the case and not been my intention.
Thinking about it, I must have seen the ghost bike before – that’s why something inside me was pulling me back to look around again. I probably registered that a life had been lost, but moved on thinking it wouldn’t happen to me. But you never know, there are always variables that are outside one’s control – even if you do everything to the best of your ability, that doesn’t mean everything will work out as expected.
When cycling through that intersection, I will continue to look for safe gaps, or better, try to cross the street ahead of time at stop sign. However, I can tell you that my attitude towards the button has shifted. It’s there for a pretty important reason, and if there are no visible gaps forthcoming, I make use of it. And while doing so, I will now be especially aware of how fortunate I am to have that degree of control over the traffic, unlike the person whose loss motivated the need.