Sue Davis shakes when she thinks about it.
As she left the downtown Askew’s and proceeded on foot towards the stationery store on Alexander Street, she had a literal brush with injury, if not death.
She had taken three or four steps into the crosswalk on Lakeshore Drive when a car barrelled through the stop sign on Alexander without stopping, and swung left through the crosswalk spanning Lakeshore.
“It was so close it actually touched my knee on the corner of the car, it actually swished my knee,” she says. “He didn’t even slow down, I don’t think he saw me.”
The woman in the car with the driver did see her, however.
“He knew what happened, his wife actually saw me, I could tell from the look on her face. But he didn’t stop, he even seemed to speed up.”
Davis, and four or five onlookers, were astounded.
“There was no braking or anything; it was a wonder he even made the corner. People around me couldn’t believe it. I was flabbergasted. I had never been so close before. One more second and I would have been hit.”
She said her knee wasn’t hurt – “it just brushed my pant leg” – but she lurched backward, leaving her with a sore back.
“Two people were behind me just coming onto the crosswalk. They said, wow, this is usually a bad spot but they’d never seen anything like this before.”
Afterwards Davis was in shock, shaking uncontrollably, a reaction that lasted for more than an hour. Dealing with the aftermath of the near miss made her think how terrible it would be to actually get hit.
At the time she didn’t think about getting the vehicle’s licence plate number, but she said the car looked like a whitish Toyota, an older model. The driver appeared to be about 60.
“He almost wrenched the wheel, like he was race track driving… I don’t know how he even made it without hitting anyone on Alexander.”
The incident took place about 1 p.m. on Friday, March 20.
Sgt. Andrew Hunter of the Salmon Arm RCMP said police files for the last year or so do not reveal an issue with that particular area. However, he said, this could be either because it does not happen often or because it is not reported to police. As for safety, pedestrians have the right of way in a marked crosswalk. He encourages them, if at all possible, to make eye contact with drivers to ensure they are seen before crossing.
Hunter said reports of vehicle/pedestrian collisions to police are rare – but that doesn’t mean they don’t happen.
“I think maybe there are a lot of close calls that do not get reported because no one is hurt or there is no damage to a vehicle,” he said.
Davis hopes the man who nearly hit her will read this article, or that someone else wrote down his licence plate number.
“I wish there had been a police car around. That guy was really, really in the wrong. He could have hit other people around me.”
Davis moved to Salmon Arm from the Lower Mainland, and she thinks this man’s driving is not the norm for this community. She mentioned to her husband the day before how happy she was that people here seem to ‘pre-stop,’ or stop early for crosswalks.
“He commented he noticed it too. People seem more pedestrian-conscious. Then the next day, I almost get hit.”