Diary of a (secondline) clinicianWhen the cat is away the mice come out to play. So it is with road use; when cars are off the road because far fewer people need to commute, cyclists and pedestrians are king. It's an odd feeling, to be able to cross the 6 lanes and 2 tram tracks between traffic lights of the main road I walk along to my hospital every morning. What's usually a veritable car park of vehicles heading into the city is now a deserted wasteland, one I can waltz across at my leisure. "It's an odd feeling, to be able to cross 6 lanes and 2 tram tracks between traffic lights of the main road" Unfortunately I still need to drive every so often, usually taking my wife to work at the weekends when she's charting chemo, saving lives, that sort of thing. The lack of other cars on the road is a definite plus and makes it almost disconcertingly easy to cross the city, usually a prolonged and frustrating trip. But you never get something for nothing. In the place of the usual maze of bumper to bumper traffic instead there are an inordinate number of pedestrians criss-crossing the roads. More than a few times I've had to take evasive action well away from a traffic light. Of course I'm very good at resolving any cognitive dissonance related to my own skylarking across 8 lanes in the morning by reassuring myself that I of course always make sure to never jaywalk in front of a car. For many years I thought jaywalking referred to crossing a road at the lights but rather than exiting at the correct spot, veering off to the left or right in one's eventual direction of travel, so tracing the letter "J" with one's path. Turns out it doesn't refer to this at all but rather a 'jay' being now out-of-use US slang for a person from the country. These jays when in Kansas City would treat the main streets as if they were country lanes, crossing the road anywhere they pleased, paying no heed to the many cars that would have to rapidly slow or stop to avoid injury. "More than a few times I've had to take evasive action well away from a traffic light" All of this of course begs the question whether disregard for motor vehicles will persist beyond our current pandemic/lockdown state and if this event will mark a watershed of pedestrians reclaiming the road from their motor vehicle nemeses. I suspect there will be some renegotiation of the new-found freedoms pedestrians currently enjoy that they will fight to keep. This will almost certainly be assisted by the likely long-lasting reduction in traffic we will see from an increased ability for people to work from home, espeically now that so many have (been forced to) experience it and found it adequate if not superior to commuting and being away from one's family. Perhaps a silver lining of our current experience shall be a win for our climate and planet.
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