Tourist Crossing

Well summer weather has finally arrived after a very wet season and Bar Harbor is overflowing with the tourists who have arrived in droves. Now I guess people must think because they drove so far to get here that they have reached the end of the world and all laws and conventions don't exist in this mythical town of Bar Harbor. After all we used to be called Eden so why have rules in Paradise?

For the times one has to drive downtown, it can be perilous. There are crosswalks aplenty but people seem determined to create their own. What constantly amazes me is that the tourists are a few feet away from a crosswalk but still insist on crossing wherever they feel like. Without realizing it, they are putting themselves and the mental health of locals at peril.

Some of the ways that they try to defy the natural law of stepping out in front of a moving vehicle are many. The one I cringe at the most is the stroller approach- this is where some mother thinks if she pushes a stroller out between parked cars that moving vehicles will stop out of concern for the child- which the mother obviously has none ( concern or brains). What they seem to be oblivious to is the fact that the stroller is so low to to the ground that we do not see this until our wheels are almost upon them!

The ways they cross are many and driving becomes a game of skill to make sure you can dodge them all without any injury! Of course all the locals say tourists are fair game when not in crosswalks. There are the ones who cross diagonally in front of you, those who just run out, those who start across then stop halfway- undecided if they really want to go in that direction and then turn around and head back. There are families who cross in droves- teaching their kids that you do not have to obey traffic laws and there are those who just stop in the middle and talk to their friends still on the sidewalk trying to decide where they want to go.

Of course there are those motorists who encourage these bad habits by stopping every 2 feet to let the stampede go by and back up traffic. I prefer the scare tactics myself- if tourists are not in the crosswalk I keep driving- hoping they will speed up their crossing and their heart rates by the time I get close!

You have to keep an ever watchful eye but someday I fear that I will become a victim of a tourist crossing as I carefully slow down for all the crosswalks and am ever vigilant for the errant tourist.