WESTCHESTER, N.Y. - Here’s a New Year’s plea to drivers on behalf of squirrels, chipmunks, as well as us two-legged critters with whom you share the roads.
Please slow down.
Just a little. It shows you see us. It shows you care.
No need to wave. If you pass us by at 15 or 20 mph, that’s a friendly greeting in itself.
Any slower is not needed. Under 15 crosses into stalking territory, especially if you are driving a white windowless murder van.
Squirrels don’t get what it’s like to be a driver with places to go, things to do. But I get it. I am a driver too. Every weekday I have to whip up Route 22 to Brewster and back. But the few seconds I might save by not slowing down when I pull around a determined walker or cyclist or jogger is not going to do me any good in the, well, in the long run.
From behind the wheel, as I watch countless squirrels and their chipmunk cousins leap with a death wish from the roadside underbrush, right into the path of my all-weather Mavis radials, I have a hard time understanding how these animals have survived on this planet for 35 million years.
Let’s say I suddenly spot one of these creatures, or a deer, or perhaps a careless runner, directly in my path and have to slam on the brakes. At 20 mph it will take my car 20 feet to come to a full stop. At 30 mph, 46 feet. At 40 mph, 79 feet.
Consider these other figures. According to a federal study on the AAA website, the average risk of death for a person struck by a vehicle is 10% at an impact speed of 23 mph, 25% at 32 mph, 50% at 42 mph, and 90% at 58 mph.
Not mentioned in the federal study is that the risk of death is 100% at pretty much any impact speed for a four-legged rodent.
It’s not just the possibility of getting hit that scares runners. Cocooned in our cushy one-ton personal-transport devices, we drivers are insulated from the outside world, cut off from sensory feedback on what our car looks, sounds, and feels like as it blows past a person or animal chugging along the side of the road.
On an average workout, a roadrunner is passed by dozens if not hundreds of cars. Most of these fleeting social interactions go just fine, thank you very much. But then there are always the aggressive or distracted or idiotic drivers who are going too fast, passing way too close. These folks have an impact even without hitting you. On pavement, the tire and engine noise from a close encounter with a car blowing past at 40 mph has to be experienced to be believed. It is the opposite of a friendly greeting. And on the dusty, potholed, but beautiful dirt roads we love to run, it’s even worse.
Our country roads themselves are a big part of the problem. Nearly all of them, from blacktopped main arteries to the loose gravel side roads, are winding, rolling, and narrow, as one would expect of former footpaths and wagon trails snaking through our rocky terrain. Take my daily drive from Goldens Bridge to Brewster. There is only maybe a half-mile total of roadway with a shoulder lane wide enough to keep bikes or pedestrians at a safe distance. Forget about sidewalks. Other than a narrow, very exposed stretch in Croton Falls, there are none.
So we are forced into close quarters with you drivers, we runners and rodents. For sure, it is up to runners to not behave like scatterbrained rodents and show consideration for drivers too. By moving in predictable not erratic patterns. By looking both ways before leaping. By running toward traffic. And by wearing reflective clothing and flashers in low-light conditions.
I understand this plea to drivers from your fellow road warriors will not be heeded by drivers of late-model German cars with tinted windows and Connecticut plates. I believe these folks are required by a stipulation in their 3-year lease to treat our secondary and tertiary roads like the Autobahn and are forbidden to use turn signals and to not tailgate as they rocket to and from the Sawmill or the train station.
These folks we all need more protection from, runners, squirrels, and other car drivers alike.
Contact the.runaround1@gmail.com with your stories and ideas to help protect squirrels and promote the local running scene.
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