Hiding behind nuns

Years ago, I took a trip to Italy, starting with a few days visiting A, who was subletting a studio apartment in Rome during her first Fullbright year.  She loaned me a fabulous DK guidebook, gave me advice about gelato (make sure it's made AT THE SHOP), suggested places to visit, and met me for dinner at fabulous restaurants.  But the most important advice regarded Rome traffic:  drivers ignore the traffic lights and your only recourse is to catch their eyes, glare, and assert your pedestrian rights while continuing to maintain eye contact.

I never had the guts to do it, so I found groups of nuns or school kids and crossed with them.

I've thought of this a lot since moving to Albuquerque.  The drivers here are notorious for being drunk and/or distracted, ignoring pedestrians or actively running them down, and weaving in and out of traffic.  There is no such thing as checking the blind spot or leaving an escape route or gap.  There are two freeways that bisect the city east/west and north/south, and the speed limit is 65 mph, even in the heart of the city.  Lane changes are abrupt, and I've watched cars essentially drive diagonally across four lanes to get to the faster lane or the right exit.

I spend a lot of time driving the surface streets or the frontage road:  the drivers are just as crazy, but the speeds are better, as long as it's not 3 am.  (One of my student staff said an acquaintance died in an early-morning motorcycle crash.  I asked if he was wearing a helmet, but apparently he was going 100 mph down Montgomery - one of my main routes home -  so a helmet wouldn't have done much for him.) 

There are billboards everywhere saying DNTXT, and numerous commercials about people who died or became quadriplegic because they were texting while driving.  There's a big campaign to reduce distracted driving, but I don't see much evidence of success.

So, it's especially frustrating that D is totally refusing to stop talking on his cell while he drives. He says, "I've driven like this for years, I can do it, we're fine."  I grab the chicken bar as he swerves towards the next lane or bears down on the slowing driver ahead of us while he wrestles with the phone. 

There are no nuns to hide behind.