My Easter weekend was pretty uneventful since Maurizio had to work the whole weekend. Luckily, however, he was able to make it home Easter Sunday by 9pm so we had our own small Easter dinner together. We had a roasted leg of lamb, some mashed potatoes, and asparagus. Pretty simple, but very tasty.
Anyhow, I am writing this blog to talk about my recent argument over the weekend. Saturday and Sunday were my last “long run” training days. The runs weren’t really “long” but I have tapered down leading up to the race this weekend. On Saturday I ran 6 miles and on Sunday I ran 8 miles. Usually when I run in Florence I do my absolute best to stay out of the city center. There are usually just too many tourists around to be able to move for even 2 minutes without stopping or dodging someone who has stepped out in front of you.
Here in Florence, at the end of my street, starts a large bike path that basically circles the city. Practically every run I embark on starts and finishes on this path. For the most part, it’s the safest area to bike and run around Florence. The path is clearly marked and there are usually bike green and red lights between the streets. Where there are no bicycle traffic lights, the streets have stop signs, which give the pedestrians and bikers the right of way. So, the problem arises with these streets because apparently 8 in 10 of Italians do NOT know what a stop sign is.
I have had many problems on these streets and I know which ones are the worst therefore I pretty much double take and ease with caution on these streets. I worry about people who aren’t as familiar because if they don’t know, its possible they will be involved in an accident. On several occasions I have had to slam on my breaks (leg breaks) to avoid being hit by a speeding car or taxi. Most of the time, the drivers are more scared than me. If they make the mistake of not stopping, they usually signal to me how sorry they are. You can tell there is a sigh of relief that I saw them first because it was very apparent they weren’t looking out for me.
One major problem occurred this Saturday when I set out for my 6 miles. Everything went smoothly until I was on my way back home. I was only about 6 minutes from my house. There is a particular dangerous street, Via Ghibellina, where I have been almost hit the most. I was running as normal and I was about to cross the street. I looked both ways and saw to my left a taxi coming. He definitely saw me and since I have the right of way, I continued across. I kid you not, that taxi sped up when it saw me and slammed on its break almost hitting me stopping me dead in the middle of the street. Then this driver, with his window rolled up, started screaming at me. I got super mad and stood in that street and started screaming at him pointing at the bike trail (which is clearly colored bright red) and pointing at all the pedestrian signs nearby. Obviously, this guy couldn’t hear me with his window rolled up and I realized how pointless this argument was. It made me so angry. On the rest of the way home I started thinking about: “what if I had been a child???” I told Maurizio about the encounter. I couldn’t tell at the moment if there was even a yield sign for that traffic and Maurizio told me I should have a look and document it since this isn’t the first time this has happened. We agreed that we would write to the Commune (the city council) and tell them how dangerous it was.
So, Sunday while I was running along the same path on my way home I decided to better inspect the signs along the roads where there were no bike traffic lights. One by one, each street had a stop sign. When I arrived at the street in question, yes, it too had a stop sign. The stop sign is also further back, if that driver would have stopped at the sign there could have been no way it could have even come close to hitting me. If the traffic would first STOP at the sign and then ease up to see if there was pedestrian traffic it would be so much safer. See for yourself how dangerous it is in the video below!
No comments:
Post a Comment