It’s Always Something
For many years I have been saying that if I ever get a yacht, I plan to name it Always Something. This was intended as a cheap bit of humor since I had and have no intention of ever having a yacht. If I was serious about it I would have called my house here in San Diego Always Something, but instead I called it Casa Moonstruck after my favorite movie. I’ve named several houses and my place in Ithaca goes by Homeward Bound. But Always Something seems more like a universal human condition than anything else, so it seems special.
What prompted me to write about this condition was something I read the other day. It seems that there has been a gradual decline in automotive deaths over the past ten to fifteen years, but that trend has somehow been intersected with another less positive trend. It seems pedestrian deaths on the roads has been on the rise as deaths from crashes have been in decline. The automotive decline can generally be attributed to safer cars with more crash avoidance functionality. What was implied was that the rise in pedestrian deaths was attributable to two things that are strangely very similar.
The theories about the rise in pedestrian deaths focus around two technology causes. The first is the newly ubiquitous smartphone. As “smart” as they are, the same cannot necessarily be said about the people who use them. How many people have you seen walking across the road (or even down the sidewalk) not paying attention to their surroundings rather than the little screen. We have probably all sworn under our breath at those people, but as tempting as it is to talk about the laws of natural selection bringing justice to the world’s idiots, none of us should take it as a joke that people are putting themselves and those around them at risk by not paying attention to where they are going.
About two years ago, I recorded an audiobook with my wife and learned of an interesting dysfunction in her otherwise dulcet speech. She apparently cannot help but say wondering when presented with the written word wandering. It caused me to wonder about the subject of wandering. On a sunny and warm Sunday in lower Manhattan, tourists were wandering from the 9/11 site to the Wall Street Charging Bull (and its nearby partner, the Fearless Girl) to Battery Park for a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty. Everyone was chill and not driven to purpose. It’s no wonder I almost committed a crime of passion.
I parked my car in a public garage that hangs over the entrance of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel (formally the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel – named after a rather obscure Governor who was “bookended” by Nelson Rockefeller and Mario Cuomo). It’s cheaper than private garages and I got to self-park, which means I got to keep my keys. I’m not sure why, but that made me feel better about urban life.
On that Sunday I drove over to Brooklyn to visit my granddaughters, who live in a nice but cramped duplex on what is called the Columbia Waterfront. It now costs more to live there and be cool than it costs to live in Manhattan because Brooklyn is the new Central Park West, which is decidedly less cool.
I was in full leisure mode. I had nowhere to go and no schedule to keep. I was wandering home in my car, wondering with my wife what we would do for the rest of the day. After exiting the tunnel, I had to execute several precise one-way street maneuvers to get to the garage entrance. The tourists were here, there and everywhere, fully embracing their leisure time.
Just then, as I stopped before making a right-hand turn, my turn-signal blinking away as it was supposed to, a woman of unknown national origin stopped in mid-street while she texted on her smartphone. I was chill. I didn’t like it, but I remained chill. No rush. I had time. Then my wife looked up from her smartphone where she is texting. I momentarily wonder if she was texting with the wandering woman. Not likely, but it would have been funny if that had been true. Instead, my wife said, “why is she just standing there?” I couldn’t help myself, I got snarky and made some sort of comment about not being familiar with this random woman’s state of mind. My chill had melted.
I tapped my horn ever so slightly. Nothing. No movement. The woman was engrossed in her text even though her family, on the far curb, was motioning her to proceed. No movement. That was it. I had reached my limit. I leaned on the horn and finally she looked up. She gave me the finger and casually sauntered towards her family while I eased my car past her, too close to be polite. I was shaking my head at her in disgust trying to wag my finger at her even though I needed it to be on the wheel. I imagine her family chastising her as they wandered to Battery Park. I didn’t have to wonder if my wife would be chastising me as I drove up the garage ramp. Thus ended another leisurely Sunday in New York and such are the ways in which pedestrian accidents undoubtedly occur in greater numbers.
The other cause of pedestrian accidents is directly related to the same thing that causes cars to crash less. The new trend towards autonomous driving vehicles makes cars safer for occupants, but less safe for small moving objects on the road, like pedestrians. I have owned a Tesla X for two years now and I made sure to buy the fully autonomous driving feature. Tesla has religiously updated the software every few nights and I can now let my car drive me various places autonomously. I recently tried this out on the always-busy I-15 heading south. All was well until I came to the merge with the eastbound traffic off Rt.78 from the coast. The car had no problem, but I did. I took the wheel out of a sense of concern about a truck at the merge and my doubts about my car handling itself properly. The car took its vengeance on me and forbade me from using the autonomous function for the rest of that trip. I had failed autonomous driving, I guess, and was being punished by my car.
So you see, it’s always something. Fix one thing and another falls apart. Get one thing right and another goes wrong. It is the nature of the world and it is what keeps us honest. We must all strive to improve, but we must all find calm and fulfillment on our own. In the meantime, let’s all help pedestrians do better to watch where they’re going and let’s risk the admonishment of our cars by keeping our hands firmly on the wheels.