When we talk about pedestrian safety in Brunswick, we tend to talk about the issues that traffic planners discuss. Are the streets too wide? Are the crosswalks well marked? The dirty local secret we can’t bring ourselves to discuss is: Brunswick pedestrians are a danger.

I drive comfortably in compact, walkable Maine downtowns, like Bath and Portland. I learned to drive in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts. I’ve driven and lived in such walkable college towns as Durham and Chapel Hill, NC. And yet in my own hometown, I feel constantly at risk in my car.

In Brunswick, I’ve had pedestrians step out in front of me from between parked SUVs. I’ve inched beyond a crosswalk to gain an unobstructed view of oncoming Maine Street traffic and had pedestrians step in front of me (while I was moving!) instead of using the crosswalk that was behind my car. I’ve waited for vehicle and pedestrian traffic to clear across multiple lanes in multiple directions before making a move, only to have a pedestrian step in front of me just as I put my car in “drive.”

I appreciate the value of a “walkable” community. What I don’t understand is how Brunswick’s walkable downtown core has developed a unique ability to put drivers at risk.

Brunswick town streets turn the “law of the sea” upside-down. When I’m navigating a small craft, I stay out of the way of larger, heavier vessels that are less maneuverable. Brunswick pedestrians are the “small vessels” in our street fleet, but they behave as if the larger and least maneuverable vessels are entirely responsible for their safety. It’s kind of like letting kayaks hotdog around a destroyer coming off the ways and making BIW responsible for the paddlers’ safety. We don’t do it. We shouldn’t do it on our streets either.

Brunswick regulates its traffic as if pedestrians are as heedless as deer. We put “Deer Crossing” signs where ancient “deer highways” intersect more recently built human roads, because deer won’t consider new travel paths. Brunswick’s pedestrian crossing signs seem similarly to mark almost any place a walker has ever crossed or might ever cross a road. In two-tenths of a mile along Maine Street (between McKeen Street and Bath Road) there are five crosswalks. Three of these crowd into less than 200 feet between Potter Street and First Congregational Church. Is it really inconceivable that a pedestrian could walk down a sidewalk to a corner?

When every place a pedestrian might step into a street gets designated as a state-law protected pedestrian crossing, it’s no wonder that pedestrians start to think that street pavements are pedestrian “safe zones.” In Brunswick, and only in Brunswick, I have found myself more than once creeping at a few miles per hour behind a group of pedestrians walking in the middle of a narrow street that has sidewalks on both sides. I shouldn’t be surprised.

I really don’t want to hit a Brunswick pedestrian. So, like most of my friends, I stay off Maine Street as much as possible. And I pray — a lot — that I’ll always be able to stop faster than pedestrians step in front of me.

Pedestrian safety depends on pedestrians, as well as drivers, using ordinary caution. Stop, look both ways, make eye contact with the person in the car or on the street. Even the best traffic planning can’t guarantee pedestrian safety, and drivers can’t do it without pedestrians’ help. So let’s help each other and make Brunswick’s streets safe for drivers as well as pedestrians.

Carlene Hill Byron grew up in Brunswick, worked in a North Carolina-based transportation engineering firm, and now lives in Topsham where most pedestrians know how to keep the streets safe.