Night and Dark Clothes Don't Mix!!

Right now I'm sitting in my 6:30 to 9:00 at night, HTML class. It is dark out, as the sun had already set before I left my house. On top of that, it's cloudy and rainy. A few minutes ago, I was in my car, on the way here. I was driving down an unlit stretch of road, when suddenly, I saw two pairs of feet appear within range of my headlights, directly in front of my car. I slam on my breaks, tires screeching like a banshee, sliding on the wet road, and stopping my car a couple of yards away from killing or severely injuring two people. These people gave me a, "huh?" look, and walked away, as the odor of burning tires surrounded my car. Thing is, these people were wearing all black, crossing an unlit street at night in the rain. Everybody who has the tendency of trying to stay alive knows that this is asking to be hit.

Thing is, this is far from the first time I've seen people in black clothes crossing an unlit street, appearing invisible until my headlights reached them. I've had many other times where I've seen some dark figure just reaching the other side of the street, making me think, "thank God they didn't cross any later, or I would have hit them. This time, however, they were right in front of my car, on the wet road. So I decided to look at all the other pedestrians out that night, and they were all wearing dark clothes. One person, I could only see their legs, because they had light pants, and another person, I could only see their white shoes, but everybody else was all in black.

Now, I know that right now, our culture seems to be in this, "bad good-guy" faze, where everybody wants to look all dark and formidable, because it's cooler. And every time you go out, you want to look as cool and Matrixy as possible, on the chance that everybody around you will pick you out of the hundreds of other people they come in contact with and say, "wow, look how spiffy that person looks." But you're probably not gonna look that cool when I'm scraping your bloody ass off my hood with my ice scraper. Maybe it's time to say to yourself, "hey, I'm an adult now, and I realize that in reality, I'm not an immortal vampire of the night."

Okay now, in all fairness, I'm sure everybody's done this at some point. I have a black leather jacket and black shoes, and I know I've gone out at night wearing all dark clothes. It's easy to dress that way during the day, not thinking about going out at night later. Sometimes you get caught working late. If you are out at night in dark clothes, at least make sure to cross the street in places where cars can see you ahead of time. This isn't a public service announcement, or a GI Joe, "and knowing is half the battle"/ Jimminy Cricket moral message thing. I'm just saying that I really don't want to go through the hastle involved with hitting a human with my car. So please have some consideration and don't dent my fender.