In the days following my rant about pedestrian safety and common sense on the Nov. 5 version of this page, I experienced a different type of pedestrian-caused aggravation.

Looking back, I can’t believe I forgot to mention it in my other column as this is not the first time it’s annoyed me, although this is the first time it could’ve seriously hurt me or someone else.

Here’s what happened: I was driving down Quilchena between Voght and Garcia when a person flung open the door to his huge truck that was parked on the side of the road just a few seconds before my car was right there next to his.

In order to avoid squashing this man between my bumper and his door, I had to swerve over the centre line.

Luckily, the other huge truck in the situation that was driving in the oncoming lane had room to move aside so we didn’t have a head-on collision.

If there is a car approaching — and it’s not like I was blowing down the street, I was well under the speed limit because I am aware people do this on Quilchena all the time — a person does not have time to open the door.

There was no time and even less room for him to do such a clueless thing.

Sadly, it’s not an unusual circumstance; I see people get in or out of their parked vehicles all the time when cars are moving on that stretch of road.

The plain fact is there is room for two vehicles moving in opposite directions and a vehicle parked on either side. Nowhere in that equation is a car door, adding another three or more feet to the space that the parked car needs.

He could’ve waited 10 seconds for the light to change and for cars to stop moving along that side of the road and then got into the vehicle. It is not hard to figure out, it just takes some common sense and consideration.

I bet it still hurts to get smucked by a car doing 30 kilometres an hour. Why bother with the risk?

While I’m ranting…

Something else I’ve noticed that baffles me about some people is their brazen use of marijuana. If you’re smoking weed, yes, even in the privacy of your own home, there is a super high chance (no pun intended) that it’s still illegal. People can smell it. It just wafts out and it’s not an intoxicatingly delicious aroma to everybody. It just surprises me that some people are so bold as to let the odour waft around the neighbourhood like it’s incense.

Maybe these people are a little too lax when it comes to their form of relaxation.

Wait, was that a wolf?

In light of the wolf awareness that’s everywhere following a close encounter between the wild dogs and a forestry worker in the Merritt area, I read things that were very similar to what I thought when I saw a wolf last winter.

I was driving on the Connector and saw a fluffy grey dog running along the right shoulder.

It seemed to be running quite quickly, although I was moving a lot quicker and passed it in a second.

I didn’t get a really good look at it, just the impression it gave me in passing of a grey dog with a bushy tail and a seriously mean expression. I thought maybe it was an escaped husky-type dog that was lost in the middle of nowhere. I definitely did not think it would be a wolf, and to me, it didn’t seem big enough to be one.

It wasn’t until a few months later, when I saw a coyote and how small it was by comparison, that I realized it was most likely a wolf.

Then I read the forestry worker’s account of her terrifying interaction with a pack of wolves, and one thing stood out that paralleled what I’d thought at the beginning: I didn’t think it was big enough to be a wolf.

Turns out, they are not as large as you might expect; the average wolf stands about 32 inches from foot to shoulder and weighs in at about 75 pounds. In other words, a wolf might be no bigger than a big yellow lab.

Let’s just hope wolves aren’t the new bobcats.