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Old November 23rd 14, 02:26 AM posted to rec.bicycles.misc
Joy Beeson
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Posts: 1,638
Default AG: Make some noise

On Sun, 16 Nov 2014 15:23:31 +0000 (UTC), Andrew Chaplin
wrote:

Multiuse pathways are like rural roads, and the watchword should be that
wheeled traffic keeps right and foot traffic keep left.


That makes almost as much sense as "semis keep right, pickups keep
left."

The quaint superstition that walking on the left has magical qualities
infests, as near as I can tell, the entire United States. I once had
a deputy stop his patrol car to order me to cross a state road twice
because it was "safer" than walking ten feet on the right shoulder!

Thoughtlessly walking on the left worked fairly well in the
nineteen-forties, when gas was expensive, and it was very rare that a
family had more than one car. When I was first allowed to walk along
a road by myself, Mother told me that if I heard a car coming, I
should get completely out of the road, press up against the fence, and
wait there until that car was completely out of sight.

Walking on the left is ONLY for occasions when you intend to yeld
right-of-way to everything that comes along, and it isn't for all of
those occasions. When I'm walking up Sunday Lane, for example, I walk
in the center of the lane so that I can step to the side that the car
isn't using, or to the side where it's possible to get out of the
street. (It usually turns out that the driver intends to park in the
place where I went to get out of his way. Sunday Lane is )
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