Huh. I can see doing that when you’re 75% of the way across. I’ve done that. I figure that the car can get past me soon enough, it’s just a few more steps to the curb.
Maybe your hypothesis about squatting is right.
People use other cars as a RADAR block. They’ll speed up to the car in front of them but won’t overtake 'cause then they’ll be the one in front that gets busted if there’s a cop up ahead.
It’s not the time factor for me, so much as my natural pace, which has to be slowed down if people won’t yield. It’s very difficult to walk at 1/2 of my normal speed. The other thing that is maddening is just the idea that people are so oblivious to other people. Just now, I was walking down the street and had to practically step in the gutter twice because there were groups of people walking towards me, and it never occurred to them that maybe I would like some room on the sidewalk, too. What has the world come to when a hugely pregnant person doesn’t get the right-of-way? 
That’s really the bottom line for me…it’s about being sensitive to other people & not just your own concerns…basic politeness.
I have found a solution to this. I put my head down, get a determined look on my face, make myself big, and plow. People get out of my way.
Yep. I’m always on the lookout for a large truck I can use as a shadow as I speed down the freeway.
That makes sense, but do they need to tailgate or can they follow at a reasonable distance to do this? It is still strange behavior. When someone tailgates me, I assume, they would like to go faster than I do. I think this is a logical assumption.
I like to go 13-14 over the speed limit as the State Troopers seem to allow this in NJ and I have a very long commute each direction. I will push it if the person in front of me is going faster, but I never tailgate the person. So far, I only have received a speeding ticket once as a following driver, I was driving a black Camaro back then, and it was a Rt. 80 speed trap. I have a good feel for what the GSP, Turnpike or Rt.195 will let me go. Rt. 195 is slower; I try not to go more then eight over the speed limit.
Hentor the Barbarian: So you have seen it in Western Penn and I have seen it in NJ & NY. I do not remember this phenomenon in California on Highway 5. I wonder what makes this common in this part of the country.
On preview: Silenus, do you tailgate a truck?
Jim
I don’t think my time is more precious than everyone else’s. However, the amount of time wasted by slow walkers/escalator obstructors/etc… is different depending on your point of view. A delay of “only one minute” can be a much larger delay if it prevents you from getting somewhere else on time.
For example, I get off work at 4:15. I have a part-time job in the evening, and the best bus to catch leaves at 4:20. Five minutes is plenty of time to walk from my day-job office to the bus stop (through a building, across a street and maybe a 50 yard walk).
If I leave my office and have no major obstructions and just walk at my normal walking pace (quick, but not speed-walking or anything), I usually get to the bus stop with a minute or two to spare. Some delays that I encounter fairly often include such things as:[ul][li]I have to catch an elevator down nine floors. Often people are incredibly slow about getting on/off the elevator. Or they’ll push the button to call the elevator and then not get on. Or they get on, but then hold the door for a very long time waiting for their friend who’ll be “just a second.”[/li][li]Walking through the building, large gaggles of people often block doorways, or walk five abreast very slowly.[/li][li]I have to take an escalator down one floor and I like to walk down the escalator (on the left-hand side, so people can stand on the right). But some (perfectly able-bodied) people like to stand in the middle, or stand next to their friend instead of both of them standing on the right. And no, they often don’t move when you say “excuse me.”[/li][li]The escalator ends at the entrance which is right at the crosswalk. The wait for the light to change so I can cross the street is quite long. At least a couple times a month I’ll just miss the light because of someone standing on the escalator, and then I need to wait an extra 60 seconds for the light to change so I can cross the street.[/ul][/li]So when people say “these are the people who feel they are inconvenienced greatly by 20 second delays…” I can kind of see their point. After all, each delay (individually) is only 20 seconds, or maybe up to a minute.
If I were driving, no big deal. I’m two or three minutes later than usual getting to my parking spot. But I don’t have a car, and when I’m catching the bus a delay of “only one or two minutes” means that I missed my bus and now I need to wait 30 minutes for the next one. I try to leave work early enough to get to the bus stop on time, but depending on what I’m doing that day I can’t always get out a minute or two early to give myself a bigger time buffer before the bus comes.
Luckily, I set my own hours for my part-time job, so it doesn’t really matter to them if I get there 30 minutes earlier or later. But it still really inconveniences me, as I have to stand around twiddling my thumbs for 30 minutes (best case scenario), or (worst case) spending 30 minutes freezing my ass off in -30C (plus windchill) Canadian winter weather.
I feel the same way, although I am not pregnant. If I have to slow down to less than my natural pace, I am likely to trip on something or accidentally step on the back of a slow person’s shoe. My legs are long and I take big steps because of this; I am not built to follow at a mincing pace, and when I try, I end up screwing up worse than just trying to dart around them. I do try to politely say “excuse me” when there’s three or four people walking abreast, but I often end up darting around them afterward because they failed to acknowledge my request for some more sidewalk to scoot past them. (I live in an area where the two biggest perpetrators of this method are ditzy teenage girls and elderly people who’ll give me a dirty look even if I’m being polite. ::shrugs:: Not much I can do.)
When I am walking with someone, I make any attempt possible to make sure that I’m not blocking up the sidewalk that I’m on, and will get out of the way of people I can see that are passing me. I also make an effort to take up as little “center aisle” space as possible when shopping. I have rarely been afforded the same courtesy, but I still continue to try to GTFOPW when walking, shopping, or in public in general. I just wish more people would afford me the same courtesy. I also have to wonder who’s raising these terribly oblivious/uncouth people who can’t be bothered to take other people into consideration.
Like I said, Waenara, my view is skewed by small-town living. Reading this thread makes me thankful that I live in a place where I can hop in my car and drive all the way from work to my house in three minutes flat, sometimes never even seeing another car on the street (and crossing a major highway, no less). I’ll take the simple life any day. 
Now, before anyone comes into the thread and calls me fat or whatever (frankly, I’m surprised someone hasn’t already), I’d just like to say that I’m a fast walker myself.
Most of my highway driving is on annual trips back to St. Louis, and as far as I recall, I see this type of behavior all the way across (although I haven’t made enough of a close study to recall if it occurs more often out this way than over that way).
Even here, there is a right (considerate) way and a wrong (inconsiderate) way. Right - checkbook out, partially filled in awaiting total, any necessary ID handy. Wrong - start looking for checkbook only after completely rung up. I personally wouldn’t confront anyone over that, but if s/he makes some obnoxious joking omment to the line about check writing - well then their fair game to have intelligence called into question.
tdn, sometimes you get lucky and the sardine-can commute is worth it. My favorite was when a…well-apportioned…lady in a very low cut top sat down in front of where I was standing, reading my book (someone else had just vacated the seat). To say I was…distracted…for the rest of the trip would be an understatement. Concentrating on my book was out. As for the middle being empty, I noticed it once again this past Tuesday. I was taking a subway which passes two major commuter hubs (Penn Station and Times Square Station). I was standing comfortable in the middle, while looking at those getting on or entering after me seemingly blocked by some force field preventing them from leaving the narrow band between the opposite doors…
As to the empty sections when the areas by the doors are filled, I had a semi-amusing experience with that on the bus last week. Typically, people standing in the aisles don’t necessarily move back as far as they can (despite the signs on our buses that say “Please move to the back” and “A little further back, please” and so on). On this day, it was very crowded near the front, and people had moved back pretty far. I was standing in the aisle in the back, and there was indeed a bit more room around me. However, a guy stuck up near the front starts screaming about people needing to move back, and citing code (using actual section and subsection code numbers) about the bus driver not being able to operate the bus if people are standing on the other side of the line. Of course, there’s no way to elicit more intransigence from public transportation riders than for someone in the crowd to start screaming about subsections of the code at them. That, and the fact that the bus drivers actually tend not to give a shit if you’re on the wrong side of the line, at least around here.
It’s not the delay or lost time that is the issue here. The uber-frustration comes from constantly dealing with Obliviates (thanks for that!), and the rudeness these jackasses exhibit.
The speed limit sign should be taken as both a maximum and a SUGGESTED SPEED. If conditions are good, drive the damn speed limit!
Heh. I wouldn’t call you fat. But your life sounds like something I would never want. I hate small-town living. Part of the reason is because I am not white, and living in small towns I have always been made to feel that more. I won’t denounce any small towns by naming them, that’s the way it is. But I want there to be plenty of ethnic diversity around me, and you just still don’t get that in small-town USA.
My favorite was when I was squished in between three very attractive women, and had to have my arm around one of them to hold on. I was so close I could smell her hair. And there were 5 boobies squished into me. Frottage is a crime and I wouldn’t do it, but when it happens accidentally, woo hoo!
I can think of another reason why standing near the doors is something people like to do – It’s where the vertical rail is. Anywhere else and all you have to hang onto is the horizontal rail. I’m pretty tall and it’s hard for me to reach sometimes. I can see that for pretty short people, the doorway is the only place to be.
Don’t need to. A semi has a huge radar shadow. I can be back 100 yards or so, as long as the truck is between me and the Smokey on the shoulder up ahead. Getting so close the trucker can’t see me in his mirrors is suicidal at best.
That’s me! I’m not a big guy, but that’s my quote. (I do got a low center of gravity.) And if you’re standing in front of the subway turnstile, and I’m in the turnstile, and you’ve stopped to gawk, and there’s half the naked city behind me… I’m not going to stop. I’m going to keep walking right through your stupid, hazard-causing ass. If I can walk around you, I will, but I am not going to get myself hurt so you can mosey around in bovine contentment.
Now, this doesn’t hold for city streets, or random doorways, but I maintain that if you’re putting me at risk, you deserve to be woken up.
And if you leave your shopping cart sideways in the lane, I will also move that for you. With a smile.
Precisely. Just this week, I encountered somebody who went above and beyond the (already inexcusable) stupidity of standing in the walking lane of the Metro escalator – he walked just far enough to see that it wasn’t his train pulling into the station, and then stopped. It ought to be legal to just overrun and trample somebody who does that.
I’ve done that on several occasions, and also with a friendly grin. I’m lucky I’m female, though, as I rarely discriminate between an unattended cart sans child and an unattended cart with child occupying the small basket/child seat area. If I were male, I’m sure I would’ve been read the riot act by some oblivious but paranoid mother by now, as I’ve been informed by male friends that it is verboten territory for them.
Here the horizontal rails are shorter (I’m tall, I usually hit my head on them) and they have some vertical one spaced throughout the bus.
What really pisses me off is this one guy every morning. It’s a regular crowd, the bus isn’t that packed but there are usually no more seats when I get on (which isn’t a problem for me since this is an express and I get off in 2 stops). This one guy, he gets on right at the front of the group of people and stops just before the walkway widens slightly. I have to push past him every damn morning so I can let the others on behind me (who also push past him to the very empty middle of the bus).
Not sure why he can’t get on near the back of the group instead of having to be the first person on. It would make too much sense.
I’ve also taken to just walking straight out the LRT doors and if anyone is pushing in, too bad. I’ve also stood stalemate with people. The train isn’t going anywhere until all the doors close, so I don’t see what the hurry to get on is, especially when it means I can’t get off.
Mostly it doesn’t bother me, I just go around or slow down… but if I’m running for the bus and you do something stupid like stop right in front of me on the flight of stairs we were both going down at a fast clip (like the girl this morning)… I’m running the fuck over you because you are not making me miss my bus*.
[sub]*Okay, I didn’t run over her but it was damn close since one second we were both moving fast and the next she was turning around. I was just able to zip around her without hitting her or anyone else.[/sub]