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How Walking With Smartphones May Have Changed Pedestrian Etiquette
An anonymous reader writes The phenomenon of 'distracted walking' — pedestrians who walk while using smartphones — has raised civic attention in the last few years, with Utah issuing fines and cities in China creating dedicated 'smartphone lanes' for walkers who need to keep up with Whatsapp on the move. This article argues that smartphone users have become so accustomed to other people getting out of their way that they will no longer negotiate for sidewalk space even when not using their phones.
Too many people period are idiots about not negotiating equitable space that I just bowl them down. I'm taller and large bigger than most, so if I think they're being oblivious or careless, down they go! Being a dick about sharing a laneway is a dick move and the only ONLY way to punish it is to not yield.
If you wanted to be an uber dick, you'd pick up their phone and throw it away, but that's too much for me =) Oh, that goes double for movie theatre texters! Die in a pit of hell assholes!
Bye!
I love walking in to people like that on purpose and then saying, "Oh... Sorry..." I secretly hope they drop their damn phone!
3. Bicyclists
You haven't ridden a bike since you were 16, have you?
Do you think cyclists feel entitled to their right of way to the point where they are oblivious to oncoming collisions? If that were true, don't you think after, say, six months, there wouldn't be any cyclists left because they had all been run over?
Walking down the street with a screen attached to your face and being oblivious to the world around you is a lot different than riding a bike through a busy intersection and dodging every third car driven by someone with a screen attached to their face.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Do you think cyclists feel entitled to their right of way to the point where they are oblivious to oncoming collisions?
Yes.
3. Bicyclists
That one goes both ways. I see plenty of entitled cyclists asserting right of way when they don't have it, but I have also seen a number of times where drivers are either oblivious or malicious to bicyclists, nearly running them down. This includes cases where there are bike lanes and the cars feel the need to cross into said lanes for nothing more than getting around another car or running through crosswalks despite the signal and despite having a red.
tl:dr: people are dicks, especially on the road
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
You haven't ridden a bike since you were 16, have you?
Do you think cyclists feel entitled to their right of way to the point where they are oblivious to oncoming collisions? If that were true, don't you think after, say, six months, there wouldn't be any cyclists left because they had all been run over?
You haven't driven a car through a city since you were 16, right?
One very real issue is where someone grew up
and learned the rules of the road. Phones and distracted
walking make it all worse.
There are nations with left hand and right hand auto driving.
Pedestrian bias is shaped by these early days and parents.
Many communities now have a large enough community of newcomers .... India, Japan, Indonesia,,.... all nations now have a large enough
that these habits collide on the sidewalk. Mericans in Stralia, Brits
in France,
influx of newcomers that this is important.
I first encountered this at airports. Then the powered walkways seemed
to make it go away but.. no it is still there....
Worse or perhaps more importantly Mericans have highly controlled cross walks
for K-12 students. Students do not learn to look all ways for traffic. They simply
step out -- many will wait for a light but many not. No officer blows a whistle and
hollers get yer butt off the road. No one hollers get a move on you are blocking
traffic. Entitlement like turtles goes all the way down...
Universities have always had pedestrian accidents as egg heads oblivious to the world forget that
they have left the safe roads of the school and stepped into townie roads. This and the
localized communities of H1B visa holder make this obvious in some parts of the US.
Other nations have the same problems with clusters of expats.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
Time to make an app that warns people when they're about to collide.
seriously if you're trying to get someone arrested/fined/sent to court just because they accidentally bumped into you on the sidewalk, then you have a much bigger issue than they do.
Last week when I was driving to work as was approaching a traffic light that turned from red to green as I approached. I noticed a youth crossing the other side, head phones in and face down in his phone, slowed down in anticipation of him walking out in front of me. He did, I braked and blew my horn in warning and stopped and stepped backwards onto the central refuge and launched into a tirade of abuse and offensive gestures. Despite the fact I'd just saved him from serious injury at minimum as a result of his own stupidity.
You just cannot help some people.
He's saying the truth. 8-9 / 10 asshats on bikes don't follow the rules of the road that they are legally required to. Just a few things:
1: don't stop for stop signs... many times not even slowing down, then expecting traffic to magically not hit them. I have personally witnessed several tickets being handed out to them since my city is FINALLY starting to crack down on them, they will even do it right in front of a cop....
2: riding on sidewalks instead of using the apparently wasted bike lanes, and hitting people walking ( you know the ones that belong on the sidewalks ). Happens with different asshats several times a month in my city alone, and I doubt it is a fluke since you see all the other asshattery anywhere you go. Hell because of #1 I have been hit by a stupid ass biker in a fucking crosswalk with the light in MY favor.
3: they observe speed limits worse than 4-wheel car drivers. School zone? Still going as fast as possible, on the sidewalk where they don't belong. They should be ticketed just as if a car was speeding ( this does occasionally happen, just needs to more often).
There you go, took mere minutes to come up with just a few things that 80% of the observed bike riders do to make everyone look down on bike riders. Sucks for the last 10-20% that actually are courteous, but then maybe THEY should start bashing heads of the rest if they want their image to look better.
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
In Idaho bicycles can treat stop signs as yield signs. When a bike does a "rolling-stop" through a stop-sign, it is called an "Idaho stop." Many states are legalizing it. It passes most places it is considered. Expect it to be the norm in 20 years. Just like, there was a time where only a few states allowed a right turn at a red light; now it is nearly universal. Because it works. My dad told me a story about driving in the midwest when he was a kid, and they didn't have that rule yet. He made a right turn on red, and had people shouting at him for just brazenly running a light! lol "it just seemed so natural"
In my State bicycles are allowed to use the sidewalks. Also, vechicles with 3-or-less wheels that are hardware limited to 15mph or less are considered bicycles, and can also use the sidewalk. (this was to allow Segways without going into the weeds and endorsing specific wheel configurations) Luckily, pedestrians have the right-of-way and the bicycles are required to always yield.
The speed limit applies to the street, not the sidewalk. They'll beat that ticket. However, many places have a rule that bicycles on the sidewalk have to go walking speed, so there might be a different non-speeding ticket they can get. Most cyclists don't actually go over the 20MPH of a school zone, certainly not over 25 which is the normal real speed. (limit+5 is standard for cars, except in places where it is limit+8)
There are real problems with cyclists that ride poorly and don't follow the rules, but I'm not convinced you know the rules well enough that you're driving according to them. ;)
All these replies, and not one person has said that they would stop.
I always stop if someones coming at me with a phone. 9 times out of 10, for whatever reason, they process a static object in-front of them differently and look up before collision. Most likely also apologizing to me at the same time.
If 2 walkers collide, it could be said that they were both negligent. If someone walks into you though, they look like a complete dumbass and cannot possibly blame you (after all you are simply standing there, already staring at them angrily)
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3. Bicyclists
You haven't ridden a bike since you were 16, have you?
Do you think cyclists feel entitled to their right of way to the point where they are oblivious to oncoming collisions?
You haven't ridden a bike since you were 16 have you.
Cyclists will happily turn into traffic without as second thought and expect everyone else to get out their way. I've got a nice highlight reel from my dashcam of cyclists behaving badly. Some of my favourites are people riding right at me the wrong way down the road... and they're all on the road because they hate slower pedestrians getting in their way the same way cyclists get in the way of motorists (oh the irony).
People walking with their heads buried in their phones are extremely rude, but the Lycra warriors on their bikes are the gods that the rude and inconsiderate pray to. They have no consideration for other road users and are so arrogant that they never believe anything they do can be wrong.
If that were true, don't you think after, say, six months, there wouldn't be any cyclists left because they had all been run over?
No, the cyclists are trying to get laws changed in every western country to make the driver automatically responsible for any accident with a cyclist regardless of what actually happened. One of the big reasons I have a dash cam is because cyclists are so reckless. This has only been reinforced by new research in my city (Perth, Western Australia) that cyclists are at fault the majority of the time (along the lines of 60% of collisions).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Germans are sort of polite, but they have some anoyingly stupid habits that I've only seen here:
1.) When a train stops, those wanting to get on will group around the doors and give those wanting to get of a hard time in doing so. It's a site like from a Monty Python sketch. Like sheep you often have to shove them aside. I've resolved to boldly stepping straight out and onto the feet of anybody standing smack in the middle of the way and making loud suggestions on how to organise things so the people getting off can do so quickly for the benefit of all.
2.) Blocking the left side of escalators. Really annoying! I recently was to belgium and was astonished how orderly people standing on an escalator would move to the right side, so that people could walk on the left side. I was so astonished I pulled out my camera and took a series of pictures of this "phenomenon". ... Not so in Germany. Regularly people will stop and stand wherever they like to, no matter if they're blocking the way or not. I've resolved to the habit of just about stepping on peoples heels and breathing into their ear if they're unneccessarily blocking the way. Stupid remarks are riposted with witty "... or you could just stand on the right side just like everybody else in every other country on the planet." ... Usually shuts them up. I've actually seen people embarassed because of this. Good.
3.) As for people mindlessly tumbling about with their smartphones and earplugs: That annoys me greatly, especially in public spaces that are crowded and where you have to expect frequent social interaction, like on a crowded trainstation during rush-hour. ... Take out your f*cking earplugs and put them in when you've found your place on the train, for goodness sake! Nowadays, whenever I try to address someone and he doesn't listen because of earplugs and/or audio cranked up to max, I usually just push or pull them aside gently. Some are so zoned out they're actually OK with that. ... Guess electronic escapisim is shaping our social interaction in that way too.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca