Our sleepy town lives life in fast lane

Imagine yourself driving down a dark, narrow, unfamiliar road on the outer edges of Spokane one evening, straining to read street signs and actually following the speed limit.

First one — whoosh — pickup the size of an overfed steer lumbers up to ride your tail. It finally turns. Then another appears. Whoosh. It crowds. It hovers. It menaces.

That’s the price you pay now, for driving to any unfamiliar address, for having the temerity to mind the speed limit, for pressing on in a manner anything less than reckless or ruthless.

Aggressive driving has become not the aberration, but the norm. We live in hostile times, surrounded by folks living lives propelled by speed, competition, distraction. We stampede through life now.

Whoosh. You should have stayed home. Whoosh. What business do you have driving these streets anyway? Whoosh. You’re lucky not to be recovering from whiplash right this very moment.

A few years ago, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched a campaign against aggressive drivers, those hyper-charged folks who race when it rains, who tailgate, who swerve in and out around you with little regard for your car, your safety, your life.

The campaign obviously failed miserably. Our highways are crowded like gigantic feedlots with drivers more cranky and hostile than ever.

Try this one: Stand on a street corner downtown. Wait for the “walk” light to change. Then watch the SUVs, the size of Herefords, thundering toward you. Drivers on cell phones, drivers on hip-hop, drivers on God knows what. Some of them with an angry glint in the eye, others just completely oblivious. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. They rush by. And you’re lucky just to cross the street in one piece.

Oddly, Spokane, this city of traditional values, the home of Bing Crosby, this conservative, cautious place – even here, we’re way too aggressive for our own good.

Yet driving down the streets of Seattle feels like a throw-back in time. I’m not talking about I-5. I’m talking about Capitol Hill, the U-district, Queen Anne. In those neighborhoods, drivers stop, politely, smiling even, when they see pedestrians standing in a crosswalk. I don’t know what happened there, who died, what horrible accident might have occurred involving backpack-wearing, latte-drinking pedestrians and the owners of oversized, mollusk-colored vehicles. But whatever did, it must have marked the cultural psyche of that city forever.

Seattle drivers slow down. They pause. Sometimes they even wave. And people walk right out in front of the hoods of their cars and cross the street.

Not here. Most mornings, I swoop down Lincoln’s steep hill past Deaconess Medical Center. Often someone languishes in the crosswalk, a patient, a frail elder, a licensed practical nurse or a mom and a kid. Most days, it’s a dilemma. There’s usually somebody barreling so close behind me that to stop would mean certain death.

The pedestrians, God love ‘em, never expect it. The lines have practically worn off the pavement anyway. And both of us know what would happen. If I’m not caught in a rear-end collision, the driver behind me will swerve into the right lane, narrowly miss the back end of my car and plow through the crosswalk, picking off the patient, the elder, the LPN or the mom and the kid just as they venture past my car.

Oh, now and then, the coast is clear, and I pull to a stop. The pedestrians grin and wave. One time a traffic cop pulled up beside me, motioned for me to roll down my window and thanked me. Right there in the middle of the pavement.

Just recently, a kindred spirit, a local artist I know, pulled to a stop in the lane right along side me. We watched the pedestrians walk in front of our cars. He turned and grinned a slow, conspiratorial smile.

We’re what passes for counter-culture in this sleepy burg.

We stop for pedestrians.