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I’m an A to B kind of guy, who might enjoy the scenery on the way – but I am not, I repeat NOT a dawdler! Not in towns anyway, walking in the countryside is a different game of course…

On the Way Home
Creative Commons License photo credit: Caveman 92223

My problem is this, if I’m on a pavement I expect to be able to get to where I need to – that’s what pavements are designed for isn’t it?

I get tired of people wandering and dawdling in front of me, and bumping into me from the wrong direction (clearly it’s wrong as it’s not the direction I’m walking in!!!). This was proved more than ever several weeks ago when I attended a fund-raising event my sister was taking part in, thousands of people dawdling or walking in the wrong direction!!

My Proposal is simple, we create a set of rules for pavements!

I’m not proposing that if you want to walk in one direction you can only walk on one side of the street, but it’s not far off that idea, and obviously if an accident were to happen with the below that could be a contingency!

It’s simple:

We paint a line down the middle of pavements everywhere (see there’s jobs there for someone!), OK not everywhere – just busy pavements (a system of A-pavements and B-pavements is now forming in my mind!). If you want to dawdle with your ice-cream or bag of chips you dawdle close to the shop windows where you can gaze into the shops. If you want to move quickly you move closer to the line down the middle.

The same principle applies on the other side of the line except that dawdlers are actually closer to the line so they can still see in the shop windows. I know what you’re saying – what if they want to see closer? That’s easy – they should move past the window of interest, indicate appropriately (hand in the air or something) and cross the lane of A-B walkers in their fast lane to join the dawdlers on the other side – passing the shop again or even stopping to enter the shop.

pedestrian x-ing
Creative Commons License photo credit: Toni_V

Rant over – Thoughts?