I live in New York City, so I thought I knew something about poor pedestrian behavior, but it turns out that the foot soldiers of the Big Apple are Boy Scouts compared to the battle-ready barbarians of Beantown.
A business trip to the Boston 'burbs required a train trip to the Back Bay and subsequent renting of a car. Getting out of the city was uneventful, mostly because I had printed out a turn-by-turn map and simply pointed myself towards a major (i.e. well-marked) highway. Returning the rental car, however, turned out to be an arduous task, complicated by a destination near the center of the city and the failure to have printed out reverse directions. Attempting to navigate any unfamiliar urban area proves difficult even in the best of circumstances, and is made harder when one tries to get real-time directions via cell phone from a wife using Google Maps.
But the thing that turned this city trip from difficult to harrowing? Bostonians.
They swarmed into the streets from every direction, with no thought to traffic laws or personal safety. Cars all around me slammed on brakes every few feet, desperate to inch their way through the offensive throng. Had it not been for the total pedestrian disregard for anything outside a one foot cone of vision, I would probably have made my train home.
There are two major differences between New York and Boston Pedestrians.
1. Boston Pedestrians Have No Fear.
They step out directly in front of moving vehicles, confident that the moving vehicle will stop. No one would do this in New York, because in New York we know that the oncoming driver will kill us. Especially if it's a taxi cab, in which case the driver will back up over our body for another pass, making absolutely sure we don't report the license plate number. Boston pedestrians have clearly played one too many games of chicken and beaten the drivers into submission. Bad things happen when one party gets the upper hand in a relationship, and this is a clear example.
2. Boston Pedestrians Are Organized.
They don't just step out directly in front of moving vehicles, but they do it as a group. People from all walks of life and all economic backgrounds are working together to thwart traffic. Sure, as a New Yorker my foot lingers for a moment over the break as I hesitate before stopping for some guy who lacks right-of-way, but, regardless of the green light, I'm not about to mow down seventeen people. In New York this would never happen. The one thing we New York pedestrians hate more than drivers is each other. No one steps into traffic and trusts other people to do the same. Here we push lone people out into the street to cause a diversion.
Note: the one New York exception is mornings on Wall Street, where there's a constant, two-hour flow of humans on pavement. The traffic lights have been updated to reflect this reality, however, and if you happen to be driving down Broadway in the Financial District at 8:45am, the lights are red for twenty five minutes and green for two seconds.
To conclude: I cannot decide whether I am enraged by or proud of Boston Pedestrians. Are they some higher level of pedestrian or an evolutionary throwback? But based on my skyrocketing blood pressure after this trip, I should probably never try to drive in India.
