It's a beautiful fall day in San Francisco. I just got back from having lunch in the park. On the way there, I ran across one of those chalk outlines they put down on the street where pedestrians are run over. This one was a 39-year-old "flagman," killed a couple blocks from my office -- six weeks ago.

A very effective public-awareness tool, these chalk outlines.
I started thinking about how it actually is dangerous to walk around this city -- something I do a lot (I hope my mom's not reading this) -- and how often I see careless drivers running red lights and seemingly paying much less attention to pedestrians than they do other cars, which always pisses me off. (I guess pedestians can't hurt them as much.) On Thursday, in fact, I was flabbergasted to see a giant, long charter bus run a red light (full-on -- this thing wasn't even close to yellow when he started) in downtown SF with a flock of people about to cross the street. It's pathetic.

The point of this post isn't to bitch about careless drivers, however. (In fact, according to this Examinar article pedestrians were mostly at fault in 58 percent of all fatal accidents this past fiscal year, which doesn't surprise me as I see all kinds of stupidity from those two-legged creatures when I drive.) No, the point of this post was to tell what happened next -- as I was thinking about pedestrians and deaths and careless drivers and red lights...

No more than half a block later, I hear the blast of a car horn and screeching tires. I look up and see a small pickup truck careening, out-of-control-like (it doesn't seem like things often "careen" in control), around the corner of 3rd and Brannan and smash into a parked car with such force it crumpled the entire front of the pickup and back of the car, which lurched ahead hard enough to send the minivan parked in front of it into a parking meter.

Holy shit! (I said -- as the crowd in Zeke's sport's bar poured onto the sidewalk in front of me.)

The two passengers of the pickup got out, seemingly uninjurned, and there was no one in any of the parked cars and, thank god, no one crossing the street. The cause wasn't obvious, but I believe the pickup had a green light and was swerving to try and avoid a collision with a car (the one that honked) that was crossing on red. That's just my theory, though, since I didn't look up in time to see what set things in motion very clearly, and there were lots of other witnesses, so I didn't stick around.

Moral of the story: Be careful when crossing the street! And, for gosh sakes, stop for red lights, people!