I realize there's an ongoing thread about almost hitting pedestrians, but that one's turned into a debate on the merits of various lighting and home decor options, and I feel like I have to share the crazy pedestrian interaction I enjoyed today. I realize most people living in bigger cities (the NYC crowd especially) will laugh riotously at how commonplace this sort of thing probably is for them, but it scared the hell out of me:

This morning, riding in to work, I'm about a hundred yards past an intersection, mid-block, in the lovely new double-wide bike lane they just finished painting on a three-lane east/west artery I spend about 5km on (used to be four lanes, til they widened the bike lanes); ahead I see an older couple walking together on the sidewalk, in the same direction as me. I was aware of them, and they were the only potential hazard in my next hundred meters, so I kept an eye on them - but it did me no good at all when the lady of the couple, who had been walking nearest the curb, abruptly turned and strode into the road like Moses parting the waters! No glance over the shoulder, no pause, not the slightest hint in her body language that she was planning to step out into a fairly busy roadway.

I didn't have time to think about how to react, so instinct made me swerve hard into the traffic lane on my left to avoid the lady; thankfully the intersection behind us had cycled, so there was no traffic in the lane - if there had been, I would have been run down, as I imagine would she. After I cleared the hazard zone and returned to the bike lane, I pulled over, heart pounding, and looked back over my shoulder to see the lady, now on the opposite side of the road, shaking her fist at me, and her partner - now abandoned on my side of the road - sort of giving this sheepish shrug, like "yeah, sometimes she does that."

All day it's been eating at me: I try hard to take proactive responsibility for my own safety, to be actively engaged in my interactions with traffic, and not to discount the unexpected behaviour of other road users - but this completely blindsided me. One second of difference would have seen me strike her at speed, no doubt leading to serious injury for us both. If the intersection behind us had been at a different point in its cycle, my instinctive swerve would probably have killed me. How can you defend and protect against that kind of thing? Or is it just a basic risk I have to live with?