Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Driving and Walking

As a driver now, I have noticed a few obvious similarities between driving and walking that I have found highly humorous.

The first being that when it comes to walking in a very crowded area, people bull their way through and impatiently swing wide to go around. The same is true in driving, obviously. Anyone who has been in a horrific traffic jam knows this. People will switch lanes desperately in hopes that is will move faster, and some idiots will even go on the median just to get that extra few feet.

Another one that makes me laugh is the utter confusion at all way stops. You're taught when you start driving that you go in order that you got to the stop -first going first and so on. But no one remembers that if you get there at the same time there are rules too. It's just the same in walking. because of the many little patches of sidewalk we have all over campus, there are many such stopping or almost-collisions. People will come to the same intersection of sidewalk paths and they stop, not knowing what to do next. But a public service announcement - when you're walking, you are NOT required to stay on your side of the sidewalk, nor do you have a two ton vehicle under you - so you CAN maneuver AROUND somoene coming head on!

The funniest connection I have made is that pertaining to snow. As it's November in Northern Indiana, it's snowed a few times. Not much, but enough to carpet the grass and pavement with about half an inch of the white stuff. Where I'm from, in Baltimore, people literally shut down when it snows, even a little bit. They drive terribly in it, either too fast and wrecking (which only succeeds in scaring people even more of it) or too slow, which causes accidents too. There's such a thing as being too cautious, and if you slam on your breaks on a slippy road, you're gonna have problems. This last time it snowed, I was walking to class via one of Manchester's many sidewalks, and ended up following a girl, being about five feet behind her. Since it was the outside sidewalk that runs along Oakwood, the Administration building and Helman, there are points where you cross a small stretch of blacktop. On this morning, the snow wasn't too bad, and traction was pretty good, especially on the concrete tops of the sidewalks. But as we continued down the sidewalk and hit that stretch of black top, the girl in front of me nearly stopped, and started shuffling her feet in a painfully slow manner. I quickly caught up with her, slowing my stride so I wouldn't have to run around her or crash into. Instead of walking brickly around her, I decided to fall back and watch her some more. As soon as the treads of her tennis shoes hit the concrete of the next portion of sidewalk, she began walking at a normal pace and stride again, so I followed suit. Another twenty feet, the other part of the "U" of Oakwood, she slowed down considerably and began her shuffle step again.

I'm not in people's heads, but I don't really think such actions are necessary, considering that most of the time they reap more problems than they avoid.

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