I don’t know whether these kinds of people exist much elsewhere in the
world, but in my strange little town, there seams to be a huge number of
people (mostly old, but some young too) who don’t like walking on pavements.
It usually happens when there is a pavement only on one side of the road,
but the place they want to get to is on the other side of the road, so they
will walk for a really long distance in the road, happy in the knowledge
that they are on the correct side of the road as soon as possible, but
somehow blissfully oblivious to the danger they put themselves in (and any
car drivers who swerve round them and risk crashing into oncoming cars).
There is one particular stretch of road which leads down a hill, and there
is a pavement the other side of the road, but to get to a lot of peoples
houses they have to eventually cross to the other side, and in a severe case
of fuzzy logic, these people think it’s a really fantastic idea to cross
over as early as possibly (in case they forget later on???) and walk for
several hundred metres in the road, which is actually quite dangerous
because it’s not a really wide bit of road and there is a sharp corner at
the bottom which a lot of drivers drive quite fast round.
However, the absolute most bizarre case of this phenomenon I have ever
witnessed, is an old lady who lives in a house up my road, who I often see
walking in the road EVEN ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD WHERE THE PAVEMENT IS!
AAAARRRRGGGHHH!!!
It’s like there are these old people who’ve been around since before
pavements even existed, or their families have lived here so long that they
don’t know what else to do! Their great-great-grandparents probably used to
walk to the shops like that in a time long ago when there were only 2 cars a
day driving anywhere within 5 miles of them, and this habbit has been passed
down through the generations, like some great skill that will lead them
through life with great smoothness.
These days, with the complete nutcases that drive around this town like it’s
a racecourse, how the bleeding hell have these idiotic road-walking morons
managed to stay alive!!!
Are there many cracks on the pavement? I have heard of many cases where old people trip on a crack and break bones, maybe they think the road is safer in that way?
And the young people, maybe they used to walk with the old people when they were even younger and they got used to walking on that side of the road that it stuck to them.
And why do they actually have to walk on the road or is there some barrier right next to the road on the non-pavement side or something.
This is probably all wrong and your town is crazy because there’s something in the water.
If you are wondering about this so much why don’t you ask them.
ugh! I know what you mean about people walking in the street! I’t’s so frustrating!
I live in a small development where there are lots of kids. The adults usually take the pavement, but the kids… grrr… they range anywhere from age 4 to 16, and all of them walk in the street. and not even on the side of the street, I’m talking right down the middle of the street like they own it! When cars come, they either act like they don’t see it, or they look right at you, as if to say “you think I’m moving?” and keep right on walking.
What bothers me the most is the really little ones… where are their parents? And why don’t they teach their kids to stay out of the road? I had a 5 or 6 year old one time yell at my car (me) to hurry up so he could go back to playing basketball with the net that his parents set up for him IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD!!! He was actually making the hand movements like traffic police moving me right along to get out of his way!
ok… I’m done venting. hehe thanks, I’ve been needing to get that out!
aaahhhh so therapeutic!
What about the opposite problem of car owners parking half-way on the pavement? Which forces people to have to walk on the road at times and also damages said pavement!
Hmmm… I once accidentally rode my bike for 1/8 of a mile against traffic on a road because there was STUPIDLY no pavement on the road for me to go on. Sorry if you were angry for that…
I do agree that you shouldn’t do that knowingly. That’s just really stupid.
HOLY CRAP where do you live? I say you find out if you can get in trouble for that, and if you can’t, keep going (at 20 mph mind you, you don’t want to KILL them…) and teach one of those kiddies a lesson!! I’d do it. I don’t know about you. Be sure to have a video recording of the incident with the kiddies playing basketball beforehand, that way, they can’t lie and you can laugh about it with your grandchildren.
Ed Case, I noticed you come from the UK. Well you know some old people in the UK, got nothing better to do than disturbe traffic, or cause agony. (No offense to anybody, well mabye a little-if you cause disrubtion).
yeah, riding a bike on the pavement is illeagal here too. Actually, that really annoys me, people riding on the pavements. No offence to infection, but how thick can some people get?? They ride on a pavement full of people and then get annoyed when the pedestrians get in the way! I had someone shout “TWAT!” at me for getting in their way when they were riding on the pavement!
Which is more dangerous, trying to avoid a lightweight bike going 15 miles per hour simply by stepping off the pavement, or trying to avoid a 3,000 pound vehicle going 40 miles per hour–and there’s nowhere you can go!
I think it’s crazy that biking on the pavement is illegal.
Illegal or not, there’s little that infuriates me more than having to slow down to 20 k/h driving down a street because some jackass is riding his push-bike on the road when there’s a perfectly serviceable path not 2 meters to the left. I don’t think anyone here would appreciate a detailed description of what I’d like to do when I see this happening, so I’ll just leave it at that.
Road = for cars.
Footpath = for people, pushbikes.
Bike path = the most rare phenomenon in all of Canberra.
good plan.