Starting last December, as I was waiting for my apartment construction to wrap up, a new (de)construction site appeared on my short walk to work. I was glad to see they were finally going to revamp the café that had closed and moved 200 meters down the street. Unfortunately, like most construction projects, there were no works in sight for the first month.
I tried to retrain myself to cross the street at a different point as you could no longer use the crosswalk -- and trust me, Germans use the crosswalks. The silly thing is that they set up a temporary crosswalk about 50 meters away from the actual crosswalk which is at a stoplight.
Most of the pedestrians seem to have smoothly transitioned into this temporary situation; however, the cars are really struggling. I have witnessed a near accident at least once a week. Some of these involved me.
The temporary crosswalk is confusing enough for the drivers, but it's the turn after the crosswalk that seems to cause problems. The cars are whipped around the corner without looking. I've been overly cautious along the whole road, which still didn't even almost prevent a collision.
A Smart car slammed on its brakes to avoid hitting me - but thankfully, I was one step ahead and didn't even make the step into the road. As a driver, I am always particularly on guard when driving in a construction zone, so it's frustrating to see others who are not.
The near-miss didn't really scare or startle me that much, aside from putting me that much more on guard, but it did make me ponder if being hit by a Smart car would cause as much bodily damage as a regular car. Probably.
At least the sun is rising earlier and setting later, which helps with visibility for both walkers and drivers. The bad news is that they have finally started work...and they literally knocked the entire building down. I even saw them crunch through the front glass windows. This will not be done any time soon. Or will the building down the street from the office.
Oh, construction.
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