Out of the way, peasant!
People; honestly.
A guy asked this question on Facebook (public post):
I usually run at night so don’t encounter many people. However, when I run during the day (as I did early this morning) I always find walkers to be inconsiderate. Runners coming in the opposite direction will usually move to the left. Walkers rarely do. Pairs of runners change position to free up the pavement. Pairs of walkers don’t – they expect me to get off the pavement.
Why would that be? I don’t think it’s a personality problem. I’m pretty sure that the normal variety of human kindness is present among the individuals I encounter. I am guessing it’s something about the activity, but can’t think what it might be. Any ideas?
I’ve always noticed that a lot of runners are entitled and oblivious like this but I haven’t seen it put down in writing before. “Any ideas?” forsooth. Yes, bozo: you are going faster, in a place that’s intended for people who are walking, so it’s on you to get out of the way and, indeed, ideally to slow down. It’s just physics. If you crash into a walker it’s the walker who is going to hit the sidewalk, not you, therefore you have to get out of the way. It’s not “inconsiderate” for walkers not to try to dodge runners; trying to dodge a runner is likely to be more dangerous – to the walker – than maintaining position. You could dodge only to find that the runner dodged too just in time to slam into you. The runner’s momentum fractures the walker’s skull or neck or arm or pelvis, not the other way around.
People. Especially runners, especially male ones.
I really enjoy the runners who think that waiting until they’re five feet behind you, yelling “ON YOUR LEFT!” and then trying to run an inch from your left shoulder is helpful. My instinctive reaction to someone behind me yelling is to stop what I’m doing and turn around.
And don’t get me started on these fucking scooters that are taking over the sidewalks.
I’ve noticed people simply refusing to notice anyone and expecting everyone else, running or not, to get out of their way. I sometimes stand still (in the appropriate part of the path) and see what they do. Many times they get to where I am and seem annoyed that I’m in the way, but they move around stationary me, rather than expecting walking me to walk a different path.
I walk with a stick. Sometimes I carry it horizontally.
Once. It accidentally found its way into the spokes of a rude bicycle.
I run into the same lack of consideration from walkers when I drive my car on the sidewalk. It really is puzzling.
Double and triple that for the cyclists on footpaths…
This afternoon I was walking along a city sidewalk when a bicyclist yelled “on your left!” As someone who lives in a smallish city, and one where people think the only acceptable transport is larger than a house, I am not used to having someone holler “on your left!” and have any idea what it is. I stopped and turned around, much like Screechy, just in time to see the bicycle barreling down on me and move out of the way. Said bicycle then ran a red light and nearly got hit by a car (who apparently saw no need to move off the road to accommodate a bicyclist who didn’t wish to stop even when legally required to do so).
I once had a jogger slam into my car because he ignored a stop sign. All present, cops, witnesses, and everyone else, agreed that the jogger was at fault. He sued my insurance company. My insurance company paid, then cancelled my insurance, because they said there is no way to win a case against a jogger for the person driving the car, no matter how stupidly f&&&ed up and ignorant the jogger was.
Sackbut, I use that “stop and stand still” trick, too. It’s effective.
chigau, shame on you for doing this hilarious thing.
Shame! So hilarious, but…shame!
But, yeah, hilarious.
I’ll confindentally call B.S. on most of the above – starting with the FB post.
Would any of you who complain care to post precisely where you were (or even remotely where you were) when these hideous-path-heathens intruded on your space?
Pile-on-rhe-rabbit is a bugs-bunny meme – you actually have to be out in the real world before you can complain about what happens there.
Many of you have cell phones with very good cameras replete with GPS tagging,. If this is really a problem, take a picture and call out the dweebs who are giving you grief when it happens – you’ll be empowered/surprised at the responses. Alternately just let FaceTweet-a-gram define your existance
ktron #9
I decline to provide anything that might precisely identify me.
My city has extensive WALKING trails in the river valley. The people who can spend $1400 on a bicycle sometimes think that spending $1400 allows them more space on those trails.
I disagree.
I do not need GPS. I have a stick.
I don’t get it. Is he running for the excercise? He should be happy that pedestrians are making him run more paces.
Where do you live that the likelihood of rude/entitled strangers isn’t already a prior probability?
My impression of runners is this:
A few years ago at the local botanical gardens I was lining up a shot of a sunbird.
Clomp, clomp, clomp comes the sneering runner who ends up spooking the bird just as I was about to take the shot.
My favorite was the jogger who yelled at several of us for having our dogs off leash because she nearly collided with a couple of pups who were playing. She was directly in front of the sign announcing that we were in the off-leash dog area, telling us that our dogs should be on a leash.
And no, I won’t provide receipts.
This really depends, doesn’t it? Of course entitled joggers who holler “on your left” to get you to jump out of the way are terrible. But the quoted post sounds, at plain reading, simply as if in that case it is the ‘walkers’ who are too entitled to make space for fellow pedestrians coming the other way. I have experienced that myself, even while being a’ walker’: narrow sidewalk next to a major, high-traffic street, and two elderly ladies walked towards me abreast, taking up the entire width of the sidewalk. When I met them I stopped, curious to see what they would do. They gave me a toxic glare and then slowly made way. Apparently they expected me to step in front of a car so that they would not have to do the polite thing.
That is how the quoted post looks to me, at any rate.
Sounds to me like people aren’t getting out of this guy’s way quickly enough (for his taste). I doubt anyone really bases their decisions about giving way on how fast the other person is travelling, it’s just that if you’re running and everyone else is walking, it seems like everyone you meet is in your way. Plus, everyone is in their own world. Runners are thinking about where they are going, and paying more attention to navigating a clear route; walkers, especially the ones in pairs that are causing him such grief, are more likely to be chatting and admiring the scenery / shop windows. In other words, they are not first and foremost thinking about what Mr Runner is doing. Sorry, Mr Runner.
ktron, you are making a lot of assumptions. I for one spend much of my time “out in the world”. I do not have a cell phone that can take pictures, because cell phones remove you too much from the surroundings. As for the city I was in, just suffice that it was a capital city in a midwestern state that is neither small nor huge. It is a woke city in a very unwoke state and I was not taking up the sidewalk, I was walking cautiously on the left side of the sidewalk where I would not be close to the street, and the bicycle could have passed me to the right without running into the trees, but chose to insist that I move rather than him. He then stopped dead a block ahead and blocked the sidewalk with his bike while he talked to people, forcing me to go nearly into the street to get around.
As for the jogger that ran into my car, that happened long before there were cell phones to record anything, as it happened when I was 18. (I am now quite a few years older than that).
Walkers obstruct and jostle each other all the damn’ time. Cell phones exacerbate the problem hugely. Still and all, the runner is moving at a speed which limits HIS reaction time and forces him to make more urgent decisions, it is his job to manage that extra responsibility.
As a walker, with pretty severe limits to my sight, the assumption that I’ll magically yield to people I cannot see is usually a hidden factor. But perhaps once a week, I’ll get a hostile comment from, or suffer a near collision with, someone who has simply assumed that I’ll yield the path to them.
Yes, the “who should give way” problem is everywhere, especially (of course) in busy crowded mega-cities. The first time I remember getting in a major snit about it was decades ago in Manhattan, and I too tried the “don’t give way, and see what happens” experiment. Feminist women on Twitter lately have been talking about the “men expect women to give way” problem. I very rarely set foot in the downtown core of Seattle and when I do the sidewalk scrum drives me CRAZY and reminds me why I very rarely go there.
And then there are skateboards…
There you go again – criticizing American exceptionalism. Ensconced in the Constitution (somewhere, find it yourself) is the provision of a personal bubble for each and every exceptional American. Within that bubble they can do absolutely anything they want (including being irate about the fact that others of lessor character have similar bubbles). A lessor known fact is that the diameter of these bubbles is proportional to velocity, total energy, and a moral superiority factor. So by definition a pedestrian bubble is smaller than a runner’s. However, the physics governing the interactions of these bubbles becomes terribly complicated since they involve the Strong Egotistical Force – the one natural force that is not affected by distance. Since, though exceptional, most Americans lack the necessary math skills to resolve these equations, lawyers have to step in and provide approximate models.
This dude would have burned twice as many calories if he typed that whole thing in CAPS.
Alex SL@15,
Usually I find that two people walking abreast in the oncoming direction is not a problem, but I do occasionally see groups of three or more people who insist on doing so, perhaps under the impression that they are filming that scene from the beginning of Reservoir Dogs. I suppose with a sufficiently narrow sidewalk (or sufficiently wide pedestrians!) two can be a problem. But I’d be willing to cut the elderly a break there. As someone who walks faster than the average person, I’m used to having to step off the sidewalk in order to pass people; it’s really not that big a deal for most people.
And it strikes me as odd that a runner is so begrudging about having to take a step or two out of their way. It reminds me of the folks in my undergrad dorm who would go to the fitness facility via the elevator instead of taking two flights of stairs. (Yes, yes, I know — it’s possible that any particular person had a disability that made stairs a problem but didn’t preclude them from working out. I never called anyone out for it. But there were dozens of people who did this.)
Speaking of the Strong Egotistical Force…
The current occupant of the Oval Office himself has learned that you can’t be too careful when it comes to choosing lawyers with the requisite math skills. Seems his own choice had some difficulties in dealing with the financial consequences of the serial co-mingling of a number of personal bubbles, which was odd since none involved any bicycles at all and one of the bubbles involved in each of these co-minglings contained nothing more than a vacuous space.
Screechy, I have a problem that two can be a severe impediment when one is on campus, with narrow sidewalks, pushing a cart full of the stuff you (as an instructor) need for your class in a far flung building that is of necessity kept in the building where you hold most of the sections, but because of strange logistics must haul to the one section that is in a building on the other side of campus. It is impossible for me to push said cart aside and toward the street without losing most of what is contained on it, and so must remain on the sidewalk (because this never happens at one of those few places where there is a handy handicapped ramp). The students, heads held high so they can see no one, headphones blocking out any external stimulation so they can hear no one, rarely deem it appropriate to shift their trajectory for a mere professor with a weighty load. In fact, they are so oblivious they could barrel into said professor, knock the load to kingdom come, and never miss a step.
This, fortunately, has not happened to me in the past few years, as logistics have finally allowed all my sections of all my classes to be scheduled in the room that contains the necessary material for said classes. I cannot guarantee that situation will continue.
@chigau,
I hope you aren’t serious. Don’t get me wrong: I totally understand the inclination to contemplate revenge-seeking methods to teach lessons to life’s assholes. But in practice, jamming a stick into the spokes of a fast-moving-bicycle could seriously injure or even kill that rider. It strikes me as the footpath equivalent of road-rage-esque behaviors like brake-checking a tail-gater, veering sharply to “scare” a motorcyclist who’s slaloming through traffic, or cutting off someone who’s driving dangerously fast. Frankly, were a cyclist seriously hurt by the action you describe, irrespective of the level of rudeness exhibited by that cyclist, I would fully expect the spoke-jamming attacker to face criminal charges of assault.
Screechy Monkey,
Depends on the traffic – in the case that I described making room for those two ladies would have meant being run over by a car.
I can also, to a degree, understand the annoyance of a jogger when having to go off the footpath e.g. in a park because one pedestrian walks right in its middle, not leaving room for two people to pass each other. As a cyclist I happily take a little detour over the grass, but a jogger may run the risk of turning their ankle when they suddenly find themselves on very different, potentially uneven or slippery ground.
Kevin Kirkpatrick #25
He attacked me. It was self-defence.
Environment does matter. If I’m a pedestrian on a footpath in a park, I know it’s a place where joggers and cyclists are going to be (and by right), so I make an effort to stroll all the way to the right side of the path.
But on the sidewalk downtown? Nope. Sorry. The bicycle should be on the road, or being walked. (Chicago at least has decent bike lanes through most of downtown, so this isn’t a horrific thing.) The jogger should be in the parks or on the lakefront. The sidewalk is neither a recreational space, nor a vehicle lane.
(Honestly, I’ve had virtually no encounters with joggers over the years. Cyclists, OTOH, I’ve had more than my fill of. I’ve been brushed-back by cyclists in the road who ignored a stop sign or traffic light; I’ve been forced to dodge left or right because an oncoming cyclist on the sidewalk refused to slow down for us plebians; I’ve been knocked to the ground when a cyclist coming up behind me (again on the damn sideWALK) didn’t see any reason to follow any of the rules pertaining to his mode of transport.
And yes, all of these cyclists were men. (Mostly white, too–the only time I have an issue with black cyclists is when I’m driving, and a messenger cyclist–a job that skews predominantly black in our area–zooms through an intersection counter to the right-of-way, in an effort to be reincarnated as a hood ornament. At least there, I understand the motive–he’s trying to get paid more by doing more deliveries in a set time.)