Pedestrians’ habits

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32637, 19 June 1971, Page 13

Pedestrians ’ habits

(By

SIMON MARSH)

Who is the world’s safest street-user in a busy stream of traffic? It is, of course, the person who shows every consideration to his fellow traveller, carefully avoids all accident situations, and anticipates possible hazards long before they happen. For without doubt, the . most sensible street-user of all is the pedestrian when he is making his way along a crowded pavement. In our cars, most of us have little patience with •fellow-travellers and commuters. We blow our car homs angrily, and jostle for a better place in queues of traffic. But once we set out on our own two feet we become little less than walking paragons. Says a social psychologist who has studied New York walkers: “An outstanding characteristic of pedestrian behaviour in a big city is consideration. According to Augustus Kinzel, a psychiatrist at New York’s Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Centre, most of us like to keep at least four feet away from the next walker—further if possible. The extraordinarily good manners of the pedestrian were first discovered last year when two psychologists at New York’s City University set up a movie-camera 12 storeys about New York’s 42nd Street and spent a fortnight filming how people walked. Then the psychiatrists, Dr Michael Wolff and Dr Verena Hirsch, set themselves on collision courses with other pedestrians and filmed the result.

Pedestrian streams They found that pedestrians usually resented someone colliding with them even more than motorists do. The films showed that pedestrians move along pavements in streams rather

like cars on roads—and on the same side. In America, for example, most pedestrians keep to the right of the pavement. In Britain they keep to the left. In Europe, women whatever their age, tend to be given right of way. In America, they have to wait their turn! • Over the shoulder Other studies have shown that pedestrians, like wheeled traffic, are divided into two types: "local" walkers who are wandering around the shops, and “main-roaders” who are striding purposefully towards' some distant destination. The "main-roaders” tend to travel together in a loose formation which enables them to see over the shoulders of the walkers in front

When one person in the group changes position, the others automatically adjust theirs to accommodate the new “over the shoulder’’ relationship.

Apparently we dislike walking directly in front of another person unless there is a distance of three or four yards between us.

When a group—who don’t know each other—are attempting to get through a crowd on a congested pavement, one will automatically be chosen as a “spearhead.” He will shoulder his way through the crowd and the rest will follow, usually in single file. It’s in the rush-hour that the true skills of the practised pedestrian can be observed. Several manoeuvres are necessary to avoid collisions—and the most favoured of these is the “step and slide.”

Tests have shown that skilled walking at speed, without so much as nudging a fellow pedestrian, .is actually physically more exhausting than running the same distance.