So I’m walking to an evening class at a local college, it’s dark. There’s a bend just before the junction and as I’m walking across a car comes round way too fast. I had to step back to avoid being hit. I was wearing gloves and as it went past I hit it, no idea why, just instinct and anger.
I carry on walking and I see the driver has pulled over a bit down the road, I was expecting a “sorry are you ok” but she instead shouted “did you just hit my car?”. That set me off, shouting at her that she almost fucking ran me over. Then she says “you don’t have to use that kind of language”, the fucking nerve.
Gave up and just walked off. Wish I’d have smashed the wing mirror or keyed the car or something.
Has anyone else almost been run over and how do you deal with the anger of it?
No, it absolutely does not.
I was homeless in Seattle for over a year.
And practically nobody camps on the highway, if you mean I5. They camp under it.
If you mean Aurora / Highway 99… sure, lots of people camp right on the sidewalk because its not really a highway within Seattle city limits.
But anyway, yeah, I personally knew a lot of other homeless people that got hit by cars, no media kerfuffle over them.
If you get hit and run, which happens all the time, and you can limp away, basically never gets reported compared to how often that happens.
They still get hit crossing the highway. I live here, you can’t deny reality.
But I believe you that they aren’t always reported.
Yep, homeless people get hit on the highway.
I never said they don’t.
Almost no one camps there, as you said.
Yeah.
And so did I. For over a decade.
…Are you normally this gaslighty with people, putting words in their mouth and then calling them liars, upon being called out on your own lies?
Or do you just reserve that level of disrespect for people who’ve been homeless?
You’re the one putting words in my mouth. I didn’t call you a liar. And I don’t disrespect homeless people. I think it’s awful how often it’s reported that some homeless individual has gotten hit trying to cross the highway. I’ve had to stop on the highway myself when people are trying to cross. It’s an issue. And anyone who drives around here can see tents alongside the highway.
You said I cannot deny reality, that reality being that homeless people get hit on the highway.
I never did that.
I never said they do not get hit on the highway.
But you said I was denying this.
I was denying that homeless people often camp directly on or alongside ‘the highway’, a thing you said homeless people do, which is so vague that I can only interperet it as I 5, which has no sidewalks, and where any tents that pop up there get taken down within 48 hrs max, usually closer to 3 hrs, because they’d be obstructing the shoulder lanes, and because most homeless people are not that directly suicidal.
Are you trying to describe 99 / Marignal through SoDo and Georgetown, or Airport Way?
With Airport Way being right up against the forested hill that the elevated section of I5 goes over, which is actually the oldest and most popular spot for encampments?
No. That reality being that homeless individuals in Seattle get hit on highways is what I was commenting on and what you replied to.
I didn’t say they often camp on highways. But they do, sometimes, camp on the highway. If you are denying that, you are lying. You can see it just by driving down the road. I’m talking about I-5. The only real highway here.
And I don’t know when you lived here, but they are not taken down within 48 hours.
Edit:
I donate to DESC. I give food to people begging at street corners. I give food or money to people begging at grocery stores. My own father was homeless and I did everything for him to get back on his feet. So you don’t fucking know how I feel about homelessness. Get off your high horse. You are wrong.
Go re read my posts and tell me where I denied that homeless people get hit on the highway.
You can’t, because I didn’t.
Go re read my posts and tell me where I said that you said people often camp on highways.
You can’t, because I didn’t.
And now you’ve specified that you are talking about I5, and that
So when you say, on the highway, you actually mean next to, or adjacent to I5, in the greenspaces, not literally on the highway.
You can camp on Aurora/99/Airport because Aurora includes sidewalks.
As I thought I already made clear in my last comment, you cannot camp on I5 for very long because you’d be on the shoulder or the middle of the road and that would get cleared out extremely quickly by SPD, KC Sheriffs, or Highway Patrol, or you might just your whole tent hit by a car.
You can camp adjacent to I5, in the greenspaces, and last … eh, maybe a few months tops, in one location.
Just because you keep seeing tents along I5 doesn’t mean the cops and social services aren’t constantly going around forcing specific people to move and then new tents from new people pop up in basicslly the same spot.
Also, great, you donated to DESC, your dad was homeless, you helped him out, you give money to people.
I am genuienly glad that you do this.
I used to co-lead the entire database management/analysis for Mary’s Place, came up with org wide policies based on the data I gathered, spearheaded new programs, designed new, and maintained and improved upon all the old, non 3rd party liscensed software systems vital to day to day functions of basically the entire org, sans accounting.
And I did outreach, on the streets, doing intake for homeless families, interviewing them, redesigning our intake processes to be more streamlined and less stressful for clients, focusing on the actual most common non English languages we encountered.
Oh and I myself was homeless, don’t have any family or friends that gave a shit.
But uh yeah anyway, I didn’t say I know how you feel about homeless people, I asked you, you didn’t directly answer, so I dropped it.
Guess this whole homeless topic is a bit of a sore spot for you.
I said don’t camp on the highway. You replied with some diatribe about how people don’t camp on the highway. And you’re just being pedantic.