More than 70 years ago, my grandparents' Irish Setter, Mike, lost a leg when he got hit by a street car.

(Greensboro had streetcars back then. And you could let your dog run free. People would sometimes call Mike "the Cone's one-legged dog," although he really had three legs.)

Today the intellectual descendants of that Irish Setter walk across Greene Street in the block by the governmental center. Some of these jaywalkers appear to be lawyers in fine clothes, others perhaps the clients of these lawyers; there is a heartwarming diversity of dumbness.

Sooner or later someone is going to get mashed flat by a passing vehicle.

(In Guilford County, natives of a certain age will ask you to "mash" an elevator button; vehicle is pronounced with a hard H and an accent on the second syllable.)

The City of Greensboro has a standard response to dangerous jaywalking corridors: create a new crosswalk in the middle of a block.

At least any pedestrian mashed at one of those inadequately-marked and foolishly-located crosswalks (by the courthouse on Eugene, by First Pres on North Elm) will be able to say with their dying breaths, "But I had the right of way..."

No such justification awaits the moving targets by the Plaza. [Edited for accuracy]