Walking home today from dropping my son at school, it suddenly started to rain very hard. I hadn’t got far to go and I upped my pace to get home as quickly as possible. Until that is I ran into someone’s inconsiderate reversing.
Our road is reasonably busy as it’s an access road for the surrounding side roads. At certain times of day it can be difficult to get out of the drive especially if you are reversing. Some people drive onto their drives and others reverse on, I guess it’s personal preference. I don’t generally have any strong views on what anyone else does, but I tend to drive on as I find it less hassle (I don’t often need to drive during rush hour).
A lady up the road was reversing onto her drive, even though I was already in sight. She’d been looking out for other cars, but hadn’t considered pedestrians. I got wetter while I waited. There was no apology. I can get that she might have missed seeing me to begin with, but in my brightly coloured coat there was no missing me later. The apology was missing though.
I was not impressed, but it got me thinking on the subject. It can be difficult to avoid splashing through puddles in the car. It’s ok if the road is quiet and there’s plenty of room, but sometimes you have to go through the puddle because of oncoming traffic and sometimes you can’t slow down in time not to send up a big splash. As a pedestrian I tend to walk as far from the kerb as possible in wet weather, but it’s becoming more of an issue as our roads fall into a greater state of disrepair because of council budget cuts. Road maintenance is not top priority.