My car’s been through a lot. And for all its loyalty, I’m not the best caretaker it could have. I got it more than ten years ago, a Honda Accord. It already had 100,000 miles on it. Now the odometer reads 250,000. The clutch is slipping. It’s leaking oil and power steering fluid. If I had a garage, I’d just raise the hood and tinker with each of those problems. But I don’t, so to ease the burden on the Honda, I walk everywhere. If I’m in a hurry, I’ll cycle. People look at me like I’m crazy when I tell them I’ve just walked the ten blocks to work, or the twenty blocks to Masquer’s Cabaret.
I guess this is why:
I’m not responsible for this statistic. But I see those people every day. One man hurries across Fountain Ave at night in the rain in heavy traffic where there is no crosswalk. One woman darts across the intersection of Cahuenga and Sunset after the light turns red. Two guys wait patiently in the middle of Sunset at Martel, having crossed halfway, surrounded by traffic and distracted drivers.
That’s suicide. I think that newspaper article is about them.
