The Pedestrian Standoff
Do You Swerve Or Stand Your Ground?
When walking down the street, do you move out of the way of someone coming head on, or do you expect them to move out of the way for you?
Everyone's experienced it on many occasions. You're walking down the corso or along the lungomare and someone's coming in exactly the opposite direction. One of you has to move! What do you do?
What Determines What YOU Do?
There are a whole bunch of factors that might dictate what either of you do. These will include personality, age, gender, size, height and even your mood, among many others.
The Pedestrian Standoff as we have called it, raises many interesting questions. If you move out of the way, does it mean you have a passive personality? If you stand your ground, does it mean you are assertive? Do you expect younger people to move for older people? Should a man move for a woman? Should short people move out of the way of taller people? And does it depend on your mood, so that some days you stand your ground and other days you give way, depending on whether you are feeling depressed or successful and so on?
Ultimately, though, the question is which is better to do from a socially harmonious perspective. Give way or fight for every inch?
A Pedestrian Standoff is a fascinating phenomenon, not unlike a shown-down between two gun-slinging cowboys. Either someone get's shot or someone changes their mind and walks away! Luckily, the Pedestrian show-down is not anywhere near as serious, though the related phenomenon of road rage can sometimes be very serious. Many of us will have experienced it, and needless to say Italians are usually depicted as being bad tempered on the road, though fortunately it never comes to much. Just a lot of shouting and waving hands, and then everyone drives off.
In the USA, however, and less commonly in one or two European countries, there have been numerous cases of people getting shot for taking a parking space, and rammed or chased along the motorway for cutting someone up on a slip road. Perhaps all we can say is that it's a good thing that we appear to be far more courteous as pedestrians than we are behind a wheel.
If you are Salernitan, we'd be really interested to know what you think about this. Leave a comment below about your view or your experience. And take our anonymous 90 second survey and tell us what factors influence you when faced with a pedestrian show-down!
And if you've got time one evening, come to our free Inglese Social conversation evenings and join in the discussion.
Interesting update on the “swerve or stand your ground” topic. Quite a few friends say they like to be courtious and usually make way. But they also say other people frequently do not make an equal effort! Is this a matter of perception? Or are some people much more aware of the importance of courtesy – even anonymously in the street? Does this have implications for interaction in wider society?