Hazard Lane

I like my neighborhood. Maybe you thought that I was done musing on what I had found it it, but I never was going to be for long. New things surface over time, which is a nice consequence of having such a poor capacity for focus. Every walk along the same ground turns up fresh material. What I finally started to think about is this jogging/dog walking path that we have. I don't jog or have a dog, but I do use this path. It runs north and south for an indeterminate distance, and is separated from the major road by a hedge and the little adjacent street by a raised curb.

It's meant to be a nice green belt area to jog in and take your dog on for its exercise. It essentially serves that purpose well, given that people are more likely to do any such thing during daylight hours. The thing is that there are no lights worth noting anywhere near this path. No street light mars the perfect darkness of the main road anywhere in between the two nearest traffic light-governed intersections, which have got to be at least half a mile apart if not more. At night, you could not have a more ideal set of conditions for setting upon innocent citizens with ill intent than this path.

Joggers who favor exerting themselves under the light of the moon are likely to become runners, and dogs brought out for exercise are likely to find it to largely revolve around defending their owner (pit bulls are at least as numerous as small chihuahua types). If those dogs don't have to go when they leave the house, they will when they have to eat a mugger alive. If you're out there for some other purpose than those two, you might have trouble.

I don't tend to get scared walking there, but it may just be because I'm complacent or ignorant of my mortality. I do recognize the danger, and mention it to every friend with whom I walk that path. Plenty of people probably would decline to tread on it altogether, and I can hardly blame them. It's only favorable when one contrasts the rates of such crimes with the rates of car accidents. I would be significantly more scared of getting hit by someone roaring through that little street.