Edinburgh pedestrians are the stupidest beings in the world, down there below sheep with learning difficulties and amoebae. It only gets worse in tourist season. Here a green man means “cross”, flashing green man means “look like you’re going to stop but then just saunter out into the road as the traffic starts to move” and red man means “just go for it big man, they do emergency stops in driving tests for just this situation”.
There’s two crossings on my route into work that are particularly dodgy, one at the end of Gorgie Road by Haymarket Station, through roadworks, where people just stand in front of you in the middle of the f888ing road waiting for a gap in the traffic and you need a swift start when the lights go green to make it through the linked sets, which you can’t do when there are some ignorant ****s holding their Starbucks coffee in one hand and fiddling with iPod in the other oblivious to all traffic. Which pisses me right off because they have a green man for most of the time and there’s only about a 20 second green light coming into town and you can miss most of that because a flock of **** is in front of you. KILL THEM ALL, it’s the only way. I mean, they are only going to work, what’s the hurry?
The other one is East Fountainbridge, just after Lothian Road where people seem oblivious to traffic, wandering out of Starbucks with attention entirely focussed on their tray of coffees and not on the traffic, or status of aforementioned illuminated man. Had a very near miss with a man and his tray of five coffees last week – looked straight at me (on road bike with commuter orange jersey and flashing Joystick so not exactly in stealth mode) and stepped out in the road anyway about 10m in front of me. I yelled at him which sort of induced this “I’ve just stepped on an electric cable” dance, but at least made him freeze so I could go round him, and the taxi (presumably 2” off my wheel as they always are) locked up behind me. The taxi man was leaning out his cab yelling at the **** as I tapped off regaining composure. Not ideal.
You can ride defensively and make allowances for 95% of fuckwittery, but not every last bit or you’d never actually get anywhere. I’m looking for bar mounted grenade launchers as I suspect that is the only language they understand.