When vehicles and pedestrians share the same space, theres a lot that can go wrong.
Distractions abound, especially in downtown Cortez, with four packed traffic lanes and a turn lane, and with vehicles turning onto Main Street at every intersection. Traffic through Cortez includes a lot of tractor-trailors, recreational vehicles (often rented by tourists not accustomed to driving them), SUVs and four-wheel-drive pickups, all of them taller than a person on foot. Drivers cannot simultaneously raise their eyes to traffic signals and scan the sides of the road. Sometimes drivers are not alert; sometimes theyre talking or texting; sometimes theyre impaired; sometimes theyre speeding.
Yellow pop-up signs, crosswalks and police stings all serve to remind drivers of pedestrians presence, but the fact remains that they can be very difficult to spot. They move in unexpected ways. Some of them are visitors from places where walking is more common and is safer because of that, and they may not understand the automobile culture of the American West. They tend to dart across the road, from motel to restaurant or grocery store, or from vehicle to restaurant or bar.
The result is that pedestrians step out into the street and drivers dont see them in time to stop.
Then the finger-pointing begins.
Jaywalking is illegal; so is crossing against the light. Running into or over a pedestrian is wrong, regardless of where that pedestrian is standing, walking or running. The Colorado Department of Transportation, the City of Cortez and the Cortez Police Department have worked together to minimize the risk of vehicle/pedestrian accidents. But pedestrian safety is a matter that cannot be handled entirely by the law.
Except in rare instances of criminal assault, drivers do not strike pedestrians intentionally. I didnt see him, they say. She stepped out in front of me. I couldnt get stopped. There was nowhere to swerve. To a victim or a grieving family member, those statements sound like inadequate excuses, but theyre all true. Often drivers could have been more alert or more careful, and they should be, especially along Main Street, but drivers are only half of the equation.
A pedestrian always has the option of staying on the curb, and often thats the best choice. Having the right of way may help in deciding who pays the medical bills after an accident, but it wont lessen the impact of a collision. Wait until no vehicles are approaching until you have time to reach the opposite side of the street without depending on any driver to slow down or stop. Go to the traffic light and wait for the walk signal. (Yes, it seems like a long wait; in the larger scheme of things, its really not.) Make sure a driver has seen you. Eye contact may seem like a good-enough indicator, but the driver may interpret that shared glance as, Good; the pedestrian saw me coming. The best precaution is to stay on the curb until all the cars stop.
Cortez is not a particularly safe environment for pedestrians, because Main Street/U.S. 160 carries so much vehicle traffic. Local walkers know that, and thanks in part to police safety campaigns downtown, local drivers do too.
In the summer, though, the proportion of non-local pedestrians and drivers goes way up. They are likely to base their safety decisions on their experiences at home, and sometimes those decisions have disastrous consequences. Safety campaigns arent likely to reach them, nor are newspaper articles. The only safeguard is for local walkers to cross very cautiously, and local drivers to obey speed limits and keep a cushion of visible space all the way around their vehicles. That wont prevent every pedestrian/vehicle accident; it may prevent some and make others more survivable.
