Only Way Is the Right of Way!

Behold: A small victory for the little guy.

This morning I was rather quite happy — and surprised — to see a new One Way sign installed on Cushman between Sacramento and California here on Nob Hill.

All it took was the enlisted assistance of other concerned neighbors and many 311 requests to get this reminder of the right way to go installed after the previous pole went MIA and inexplicably unreplaced on the quick.

Fingers crossed this reminder will now empower some of the drivers on the hill, you know the ones…the ones who, at best, can’t or, at worst and in daily reality, won’t make sense of the rules of a road (because they’re inconvenient, y’ know…when it’s their time to go), of how actually traffic works in polite society.

Some of these people may think they can afford to hit a running student or a jogging visitor or a walking resident, but they can’t. Some of these people think they’re not hurting anyone, when they break the rules for their own never-ending benefit, but the smallest, most “victimless” of actions always begin with a small moral compromise before they become a fucking tragedy.

Some of these people, these bad, entitled, annoying, disregulating, rude drivers, ought to be slapped in the face — but you know that if one were to do that, then one would get in trouble, because that’s when the people “in charge” will actually use the installed surveillance on our streets to demonstrate how one was in the wrong and those drivers were “just in a little hurry.” So slapping people for any reason, yeah…not the proper reaction. (Yelling and shaming, on the other hand….)

Let this sign be a sign that the system can work for the good and safety and security of all us, with a little help from our friends, a sensical ask, and a lot of persistence.

Frustration channeled well can lead to action, which can yield to results.

And that’s all some of us are asking: Yield to pedestrians. Yield to the right of way.

Yield. Relax. You’ll get there — even, especially, if you do the right thing.

Plus, you’re on four wheels. STFU and learn the difference between an entrance and an exit. Hint, hint: Look around you, and remember that you are not the king of the road.