At the Corner of Laziness and Ignorance

I came to the conclusion recently that people are lazy about the strangest things and I, for one, do not escape this conclusion.  There is strange intersection at Cortelyou Road and Coney Island Avenue in my neighborhood (the pizza at Palermo right at the corner is pretty good).

 As a person walks on Cortelyou Road (in either direction) towards Coney Island Avenue, you can see that the two streets do not intersect directly.  The Cortelyou Road on the south[1] side of Coney Island Ave. is further east than the north side of Coney Island Ave.  Cars turning left on to Coney Island from Cortelyou, in either direction, take up a good portion of the intersection when they have the green light.

 Pedestrians have two options to cross the street in cross walks but the vast majority of pedestrians choose to walk across Coney Island Ave. in the middle, right where both left-turning cars (regardless of who has the green light) have to drive.  There is even A SIGN that says “proceed to the cross walk”.  Most people ignore this and walk in front of these cars that technically have the right-of-way.  I mean if someone driving their car to that intersection is having a bad day and thus, driving angry, you may end up on NY1 that day.

 Now, why all these pedestrians (including myself) choose not to proceed to the cross walks (and thus, escape any negligence that would be thrown at a pedestrian by a road raging New Yorker) cannot be thoroughly determined.

I can tell you that, personally, I don’t proceed to either of the cross walks because, in the mornings, I want to walk in the shade which falls on the east[2] side in the pre-noon hours.  In the evenings, I'm probably just too tired to care and probably don't mind if I get hit by a car.  I will say that I have gone to great lengths to at least look if there are vehicles approaching the intersection and not walking in front of them without paying any mind.

A friend from the neighborhood and I had a chat recently about the intersection’s phenomena and we chalked it up to laziness.  A I really too lazy to walk back across Cortelyou to get to the subway station?  Am I really too lazy to walk the extra distance across Cortelyou to get to the cross walk in order to cross Coney Island?  

In short: probably.

Truly a strange thing to be lazy about but I’m sure most people that cross in between the crosswalks are doing for similar reason to me, and thus, are choosing to cross the street in this spot out of laziness.  Not necessarily a conscious decision, but nevertheless, still a choice.

So Americans are lazy.  That’s nothing new.  But this may raise the bar a bit higher.  I guess the bright side would be that these people are at least walking.

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[1] Not truly south

[2] Not truly east