Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 1177, Pedestrian Safety.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 1177.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
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This episode is a dialogue between Carla and Ruben about being safe as you are walking down the street.
Let's get started.
What happened?
We were walking on the sidewalk approaching the intersection.
The crossing guard was there to stop traffic so we could cross the street.
We were halfway through the designated crosswalk when a guy driving like a demon whips around the corner.
And he didn't stop at the stop sign?
No, he didn't even slow down.
Didn't he see the crossing guard or the other pedestrians?
There are several big trees there, so it's a blind corner with limited visibility.
Still, he should have stopped.
Was anyone hurt?
No, we were able to get out of his way.
But he could have easily taken out five or six people.
That's crazy.
What we need are flashing crosswalk signs.
Maybe that would get drivers' attention.
And maybe armor for our daughter, too.
Ruben begins by saying.
Ruben says walking their daughter to school means is dangerous d-a-n-g-e-r-o-u-s.
Dangerous is unsafe, something that is risky, something that could hurt you or injure you or possibly even kill you.
Carla asks what happened.
Rubin says we meaning he and his daughter were walking on the sidewalk approaching the intersection.
A sidewalk.
S-I-D-E-W-A-L-K is a narrow area next to a street, usually made of concrete though it could be made of asphalt or some other material where people can walk safely so they don't get hit by the cars in the street.
The sidewalks are not in the street, they're next to the street.
In most American cities, the sidewalks are actually a couple of inches higher than the street.
Rubin says that he and his daughter were walking on the sidewalk approaching the intersection, I-N-T-E-R, S-E-C-T-I-O-N.
An intersection is where two or more streets cross each other, where they meet.
The crossing guard, says Rubin, was there to stop traffic so we could cross the street.
Many times, schools will have people called crossing guards, who work at the intersections during the hours in which children are walking to school or walking home from school, in order to stop the cars so that the children can cross the street, go from one side of the street to the other safely.
We call these people crossing guards, G-U-A-R-D.
Crossing comes, of course, from the verb to cross, which here means to go from one side of the street to the other.
Here in Los Angeles you'll often see crossing guards, and they're almost always adults who are paid to be there for a couple of hours every day, usually in order to help the children cross the street.
When I was growing up, the older children worked as crossing guards.
They would take the children, the younger children, and walk with them, and they would have flags, pieces of plastic I remember them being on long poles that they would hold out and and indicate to the cars that they should stop so that the children could walk across the street.
This, of course, was usually on corners or intersections, where there was no traffic signal, no electronic signal to stop cars anyway.
The people in my school were called police patrols, P-A-T-R-O-L-S.
A police patrol was a 6th grade student who helped the younger students, usually grades 1, 2 and 3, to get home safely from school.
This was also in a neighborhood where most of the children walked to school.
This isn't always the case nowadays, especially in Los Angeles, where the schools are farther away from children in many cases, and so they have to take a bus.
But when they do walk there are often crossing guards at the corners near the school.
So the Rubin says the crossing guard was there to stop traffic so we could cross the street.
Traffic, T-R-A-F-F-I-C, here just refers to the cars that are moving down the street.
Rubin continues we were halfway through the designated crosswalk when a guy driving like a demon whips around the corner.
A crosswalk.
C-R-O-S-S-W-A-L-K is an area on the street that has two white lines and there's room in between the white lines for people to walk.
A crosswalk is a place where you, as a person walking on the street, especially a busy street, are supposed to cross.
Cars are supposed to stop if there is someone in the crosswalk.
If there's someone walking across the street in the crosswalk, the cars are supposed to stop.
Now, not all cars do stop, But the law in most places says that if you are in the crosswalk, walking across the street, the cars have to stop for you.
Even if the crosswalk is not at an intersection, even if it's in the middle of a block, which sometimes happens if there are very long blocks, that is, long distances between intersections.
A designated crosswalk is just a crosswalk that has been painted and often has a sign next to it that says crosswalk, so that drivers can see that there is a crosswalk there on the street.
Rubin says he and his daughter were halfway through the designated crosswalk, meaning they were in the middle of the street.
When a guy, a driver, driving like a demon whips around the corner.
The word demon, D-E-M-O-N here, refers technically to some sort of evil person or evil spirit.
Here it probably just means something like a crazy person or a person who wasn't driving very carefully.
To whip, W-H-I-P, here means to move very rapidly.
So to whip around the corner means to turn the corner, to go from one street to the intersecting street or the street that crosses the street that you are on.
Carla says, and he didn't stop at the stop sign.
Some intersections have stop signs, which is usually a red sign that has white letters that say surprise surprise, stop.
Other intersections have traffic lights.
These are lights, red, yellow, and green, that indicate whether you should stop or go.
Of course, in most big cities, most intersections don't have stop signs or traffic lights.
You're just supposed to slow down at the intersections and the first person to the intersection gets to go first.
Well anyway, in this story, Carla is surprised that this driver didn't stop at the stop sign, which of course the driver should have.
That's the law in most American cities.
Ruben says, no, he didn't even slow down.
He didn't even decrease his speed.
Carla said, didn't he see the crossing guard or the other pedestrians?
A pedestrian.
P-E-D-E-S-T-R-I-A-N is another name for a person who is walking, someone who is not in a car or on a motorcycle, but who is outside, walking on a sidewalk or crossing a street.
Rubin says, there are several big trees there, so it's a blind corner with limited visibility.
A corner.
C-O-R-N-E-R is another word for an intersection where two streets cross, two or more streets cross.
A blind B-L-I-N-D corner is a corner where, as you're driving down one street, you cannot see the cars coming on the other street.
Perhaps there's a building there, or in this case, there are several big trees there.
Because of the big trees, there is limited visibility.
V-I-S-I-B-I-L-I-T-Y.
Visibility means the ability to see.
So if there is limited visibility, there is not an easy way for you to see or it is difficult for you to see.
Carla says, still, he should have stopped.
Was anyone hurt?
Rubin says, no, we were able to get out of his way.
To get out of someone's way means to move in order to avoid being hit by another person.
Perhaps that person is walking, or perhaps that person is driving a car, as was the case here in this dialogue.
Rubens says he could have easily taken out five or six people.
The phrasal verb to take out can mean a lot of different things.
Here, it means to kill someone.
If the car had taken out five or six people, the car would have hit and killed five or six people.
To take out can also mean to go to a restaurant and pick up your food.
We call that take out food as a noun, and the verb would be to take out.
To take out can also mean simply to remove.
We usually use that phrasal verb in that sense when we're talking about the garbage or trash in your house.
I have to take out the trash, T-R-A-S-H.
That means I have to take the junk inside my house that I no longer want and remove, bring it outside, usually to put it in another container what we would call a bin B-I-N, a trash bin and then later take the trash bin out to the street so that someone can come and take the trash away.
But here, to take out means to kill.
Carla says, that's crazy.
What we need are flashing crosswalk signs.
Flashing, F-L-A-S-H-I-N-G, is when a light turns on and off repeatedly.
On and off, on and off, on and off.
That would be flashing.
The flash has some other interesting meanings, but we won't talk about those today.
You can look at the learning guide for those.
Carla says that they need flashing crosswalk signs, that is, signs on the side of the road that not only indicate that there is a crosswalk on the street, but have lights flashing so that you notice the signs.
Maybe that would get drivers' attention, she says.
Then Ruben jokes at the end, and maybe armor for our daughter, too?
Armor, A-R-M-O-R, is a word you don't see a lot anymore.
It's basically a heavy metal covering. that is worn for protection.
We associate it with medieval days of knights fighting in a battle, and they would have special clothing that would protect them from swords and other arms that the other soldiers would try to injure them with.
That's why we know Ruben is making a joke here.
He's not actually suggesting that his daughter go out with metal clothing on so that she doesn't get hurt.
Though here in Los Angeles, it might not be a bad idea.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
What happened?
And he didn't stop at the stop sign?
No, he didn't even slow down.
Didn't he see the crossing guard or the other pedestrians?
There are several big trees there, so it's a blind corner with limited visibility.
Still, he should have stopped.
Was anyone hurt?
No, we were able to get out of his way, but he could have easily taken out five or six people.
That's crazy.
What we need are flashing crosswalk signs.
Maybe that would get drivers' attention.
And maybe armor for our daughter, too?
There's nothing dangerous about our dialogues, I hope, thanks to the wonderful work by our wonderful scriptwriter, Dr Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again, why don't you, right here on ESL Podcasts.
English as a Second Language podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2015 by the Center for Educational Development.
