Do you walk into traffic?

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I'll cross a road wherever/whenever I feel like it and sometimes when I'm half-way across I realise what a damn silly thing that was to do.
Occasionally I'll wander across it too slowly, lost in thought, and there have been a couple of narrow misses.

Where's the " No, I'm one of those poor drivers who have to swerve or slam on the brakes and honk my horn to avoid hitting those who do walk into traffic all the whilst getting scared out of my skin".
It is especially dangerous for me and other drivers in winter when the roads are icy and one swerving or slamming the brakes to avoid hitting a jaywalker or person wqndering into traffic then sliding can cause a catostraphic multicar accident.

Yes. I actually WANT to be reckless for some reason.

Poor you - but I guess we could simply not leave our homes, or you could simply stop driving. How's that?
I can assure you it's not something I do out of choice - it's not like I just launch myself off the kerb and hope for the best.

I also drive, BTW, and drive carefully enough to avoid having to slam on the brakes because I look far enough ahead to see someone wandering in the road. And yes, there have been times when I did.

You know what, I'm not stupid. I'm not unaware of all that. I'm not oblivious to the problems it causes. I know someone who deliberately walks into traffic and I have done everything possible to stop her, and so have other people, but she denies that she even does it (she knows she does she just lies about it and says "you mistook this other guy for me" even though he looks nothing like her and stuff). So really, I'm not that dumb.

My personal solution is not to go out alone if I can help it (which I already do to avoid other serious problems), because there is no other solution. But, it's not always possible for me to go out anything but alone. And when I go out alone, there is no possible solution. My brain isn't like some people's. Only one other person has given the main reason I have for accidentally wandering into traffic. And that is that my brain perceives things in a sensory rather than conceptual way. I literally cannot decipher what's around me and put ideas into it (like figuring out what everything is). I can do it with much effort at home. Outside of home, even if I try, it just blips in and out in a way that's ultimately worse for my ability to handle things. So I just have to really hope nothing happens if I can even think in a way that allows doing that. If I'm alone, I'm out of luck, I can either not do whatever really needed to be done (I don't go out alone unless it's vital) or take my chances. It's pretty ridiculous to assume someone can just somehow "solve their brain" in some way, like there's any solution to having a non-conceptual-based way of perceiving the world as the default and far stronger mode of comprehension. The best I can do, after three decades of practice, outside of very familiar situations, is sort of let things in my brain fizzle in and out like sparks or something. But geez I'm not stupid, I'm just a very different kind of autistic than a lot of people here are.

I'm really tired of people placing cognitive disability and intelligence in direct opposition to one another. They are not. Some people are better at developing coping mechanisms for their symptoms, others may have milder or different symptoms that are more amenable to coping mechanisms. What we socially define as intelligence may make it possible for some to cope with some things that others cannot.

Maybe I'm just annoyed by the fact that there's someone I know in real life who takes pains to explain things to me that I already know because I do not do those things at all or I do not do them in a manner he thinks I should, and he does not listen to the fact that the knowledge he is trying to give me is in my brain, but it does me no good because I cannot use it, and comments like that one quoted above remind me of exactly that.

Oh, and to add to the thread's thing: I do tend to play with sharp objects when they're within arm's reach. I don't consciously think "Oh, there's a knife or pair of scissors" I just pick it up and start messing with it. I have accidentally cut someone else once, a long time ago, but this tends to make people nervous. In general I'm just happier if people don't leave anything sharp within arm's reach because no matter how much I know I shouldn't do this, I somehow do it.

This isn't the only behavior like this I have, but it's the one that came to mind.

Last edited by Verdandi on 15 Feb 2011, 5:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think she was talking about people in general.

People really need to stop assuming people are talking about them when they talk about people in general. They're not usually including people with disabilities or other issues.

I have seen women saying over at Babycenter how stupid people are when they make comments because they weren't trying to be offensive or insulting but didn't know those comments would offend so they say them. I didn't assume they were calling me stupid just because I make comments and not even mean to offend or to insult. I didn't even assume they must have thought autistic people are stupid too just because they said people are stupid so they make rude comments and not even know it. And honestly I didn't even see anything wrong with those comments strangers made to them. I just thought they were being too sensitive and figured it must be their pregnancy hormones.


ETA: There is nothing wrong with telling someone why people do stupid things such as walking out in traffic. Just tell them your issue and why you do it so they know next time if they see a dumb person walking out in traffic, they should consider maybe that person isn't dumb and maybe he or she has a cognitive issue like autism or something else that would cause them to go out in traffic. That way it prevents them from yelling a name to them making them feeling bad about their disability or getting too upset about the situation.

I can understand this. I have to make sure that there are no dangerous objects on my desk, because sooner or later, I end up chewing on everything on my desk. I just get focused on something, and my hands wander and suddenly I'm chewing on something. I've found myself with sharp objects in my mouth, and I suddenly become aware of how foolish that is. I hate it. My mind wanders and my body just does stupid things.

I'm extremely cautious when it comes to traffic. Unlike most of my co-workers, I don't like to jay-walk (I used to join them, but it just got too scary with the way traffic is around here, especially with the way they drive the buses).

I voted "Yes. I forget to look where I'm going, am lost in thought, etc."
It doesn't happen very often - probably about 2 or 3 times a year.
I am actually more afraid of traffic than most people, and am usually quite careful, but sometimes my absent-mindedness still makes me forget to check whether it's safe to cross.

At times when I've been lost in thought I've had people grab the back of my shirt (which snaps me back into noticing the outside world again) to keep me from walking to into traffic. But that isn't too frequent.

What I do have had trouble with is crossing in front of cars in parking lots or other 'unstructured' situations. I'll start to cross, see a car, not be sure if it's slowing down (let alone with intent to stop), so I'll stop, but then the car will look stopped, so I'll start, but in the mean time the car has started up again. So, there's a stuttery feedback loop where I and the car are going STOP-GO-STOP-GO... I think it's because it takes me a little more time than normal to determine what the car is doing, and in that time the driver thinks I'm waiting for them to go past, or that I have registered them and am proceeding on the assumption that they're going to stop.

Now that I think about it, the lack of trouble at crosswalks is probably because I focus on the crossing signal, and most of the places I walk these days have signaled crosswalks. Also, I tend to use other people as a cue as when it's safe to go (seems like most people do that?). Being by myself at an uncontrolled crosswalk does seem to be the most difficult scenario.

(It's a good think I wrote this before voting, I was going to put "no problem" because I was thinking of signaled crosswalks only.)

Haven't been hit by a car yet, so no, I have no problems with traffic and never really had. If you want to get somewhere as a pedestrian where I live sure if there's lights you can wait and cross that way, but if there's a roundabout near there won't be lights. What you need to cross is just faith. Faith that the driver will stop because his insurance would shoot right up if he hit you. Or for the street to be empty - yeah right, like that's gonna happen. Still, no one wants to hit people and have their insurance goes up so it all mostly works

One time I was daydreaming when I was walking and got a whiff of Penora's pizza on the corner of Penora and Broadway in Depew it distracted me enough to keep on walking but I managed to hear the car coming and stopped in time.

When I was in better shape I was running with a walk man blasting Motor Head's Shoot You in the Back and ran into traffic while cars whipped by me honking their horns and swearing their heads off.

Where I live a lot of people do not use turn signals at the corners so it is safer to J-walk.

Perhaps people who know they wander into traffic should carry a card or wear a bracelet saying "I accidentally wander into traffic" so if they get hit without eyewitnesses, the person who hit them might not get blamed. I don't know if that would work.

I answered no, but I have been known to cross the street at the wrong time. The rules for when to cross are kind of complicated and it's scary and I just want to get back home. Doesn't happen often. Then again, I don't go out walking alone all that often, and I'm usually not too bad at it.

I am an expert jaywalker, so I love to walk into traffic. Scurrying across icy streets in the dark is one of my favorite activities. One of my greatest fears is hitting a pedestrian with my own car.