The perils of walking slow: scientists analyze sidewalk rage
online.wsj.com
online.wsj.com
Of course they know, they've got all the senses of everyone else. They're just self-absorbed, and don't care that they're being rude by getting in the way. There's no reasoning with such people; a shove is the only language they understand.
"After all, it seems simple enough to just go around the slow individual."
Trust me, if I'm able to do that, then I do, no questions asked. Unfortunately the other common behaviours of slow walkers include: sudden erratic motion, walking side by side in lines with others, and stopping dead in choke-points.
Or people who will stand on the left, despite clearly being able to see that no-one else is, even if they can't read the clear signs in English. Again it's not rude to push them out of the way; they started it.
I'm a pavement rager. I'm baffled by slow people with no consideration dawdling through a train station at rush hour. I tried once to patiently amble along behind them, and found out it impossible.
I've learnt with OAPs that if they look like they are slowing down (!), and you have the choice to go around either side, always chose the smallest gap. Almost always they turn like an oil-tanker into the larger gap. That way you can pass by unnoticed.
Couple of things wind me up. A guy reading a Kindle bumbling up a flight of stairs utterly unaware of the holdup he was causing.
Not sure about handbags, they seem to be blunt instruments to be swung at fellow commuters. And always seem to increase in size and violence when their handler is looking away from you.
Also, the number one tip for being bumped into by other people: wear a laptop backpack. I have a feeling there's some sort of super-magnetic quality backpacks have when on my back...
I would find it useful to demarcate walking and standing areas in train station concourses. Although they have a no-standing area in Shepherd's Bush and that doesn't seem to be working. Not sure whether passengers are generally oblivious of their surroundings or have just have their London commuter face on.
Sometimes i stifle the urge to just push the annoyance down the stairs.
What really irks me is that these same people, who feel entitled to monopolize any given thoroughfare, are just as common in motorized vehicles on the highway. The problems there are much worse though. Honking is considered rude and is usually illegal for non-emergency use. There's no such thing as a gentle but assertive shove with that much kinetic energy involved. In the worst case, some self-righteous offenders will intentionally congest traffic if they feel others' driving is 'unsafe'.
ONE OF YOU JACKASSES IS GOING TO HAVE TO MOVE OR GET WALKED INTO.... IT IS SIMPLE PHYSICS HERE!
ehm... sorry about that. It is one of my few real rager pet peeves.
They assume, consciously or not, that you will change course for their benefit, but you can't change course if you're not moving. Suddenly, you become a stationary object, and they will adjust to that. I've never had people blunder into me when I've done that, and I've sometimes noticed them correct their walking formation afterward.
In the real world, there really are people who block traffic in entirely unreasonable ways that effect large numbers of other people. Really the only way to properly handle that situation is to shove past, so that you don't add to the situation. There is no neutral position, you can only hope to be less rude.
It is difficult for people to agree, not only across cultures but within the same culture, with what is considered socially correct. Don't get me wrong: I am a large believer in courtesy. I share your vision that there is a lack of efficiency, that a few people can affect a large number of people. I see it all the time in traffic jams. On the sidewalk, I try to let people pass; I feel it is not only nice but also more efficient.
However, getting angry over someone else not doing the same as I would do... That is just ego speaking. My way is not the only way or necessarily truly the best way, whatever my rationalization to suit my sense of self-righteousness.
The point I and others are trying to get across here is that the author of the story is voicing an unrealistic expectation; one that involved everyone playing by the same rules. My point is that outward 'aggression' is a normal part of dealing with a crowd, you can't villain-ize it without villain-izing the behaviour that makes it necessary.
"If everyone were perfectly courteous, everyone would be standing perfectly still so as to not accidentally infringe on someone else's perceived personal space."
By this I mean a world where everybody acts to minimize discomfort of others on the streets is a fantasy.
Have you considered that the anger is not "they do it different" but "their actions are causing measurable negative consequence to me"? If the inefficiency caused by a door stopper causes me to miss a train connection, is it really all about my ego, or is it about that person screwing up my entire travel?
They did something that was not a part of our perfect little plan, and it simply irks us. We are so wrapped up in our own vision of how the world is, how the world will be for us, that we get angry when something happens counter to our vision. Yes, it is narcissism.
And that is okay. It is okay to recognize a problem and adapt to it or to regain control. When it is not okay is when our angry reaction is also negative.
To take your hypothetical situation: "If the inefficiency caused by a door stopper causes me to miss a train connection, is it really all about my ego, or is it about that person screwing up my entire travel?" I am sure all of us know somebody who is habitually late, and they have all kinds of excuses for it. So do people who are only sometimes late. This is just bad time management. The expectation that the world should operate perfectly in accordance with your plan is where I can claim it is about your ego. You are going to blame that one person for screwing up your travel? I like the pseudointellectual rationalization here, the excuse that it was the "inefficiency" of that other person that caused your problem. Maybe you should have gotten out of bed earlier. Maybe your affairs should have been in order before Go time. We like to place the blame on others rather than accept personal responsibility. That is just how important and infallible we are. Narcissism. Granted, that person's stopping behavior did have an impact, as did the speed of your walking, the amount of luggage you were carrying vs how much you worked out weeks before in order to more easily carry it, the stop lights on the way to the station, the time it took to get your ticket checked, and the line of other people boarding.
Again, please do not feel insulted if you fall in the narcissism category; we all do to varying degrees. Very common. My intent was to point it out as a huge contributing factor in order to balance things out a bit. The OP was trying to put the "ragers" in the clear, but as the saying goes, "It takes two to start a fight."
Inside my control or outside my control doesn't matter. I don't care when people do things that don't have negative consequence to me. I do care when I am responsible for doing something that has negative consequence to me. The common denominator here is not my control, just that i don't like the negative consequences.
I understand now... please let me hear how you would use this to troll the rape victim that it is really just her self absorption that makes it a problem, she shouldn't have been so narcissistic about her genitalia. Or the family of someone murdered, and how they really just should have spent more time with him, instead of missing him now. It is unreasonable in both cases to thing that life would have gone perfectly and they may have lived their life without rape and murder.
Your style of trolling is actually pretty good dark humor, now that I get it.
Allow me to depart from the time management answer (it was a convenient way to reveal that both parties were at fault in one way or another), since it does not apply at all in the new scenario, and let's meet up with my core point in this whole thread.
As I understand your hypothetical situation, a single person stopped at a choke point, and because of them keeping you from moving forward, you missed an important rendezvous. Missing this means you take financial loss. You are going to experience a flash of anger for your loss. You have a target for your anger, the person who blocked you.
My core point is this: You are angry because the situation is out of your control, did not match your plan. The world did not operate according to your desires; someone else barged in and interrupted it, stopping you from moving forward. I propose that the amount of anger you experience is proportionate to how wrapped up with yourself that you are.
Here is the litmus test. What if you find out soon after that it was because that person had a stroke right there at the choke point? If you are like most normal people in this situation, you will suddenly experience a mix of emotions: lightened anger (it is still there, since things did not go your way), a sense of shame (oh, they had a really good reason, and you were really targeting them), a touch of concern, and a bit of relief that something in the world makes some sense.
In the absence of this information, having nothing but your own viewpoint to go on, you would have remained angry, even angrier as time passed. With somebody else's viewpoint, suddenly it seems unjustified to an extent. Amazing how seeing through another's eyes changes the emotion.
Stop telling me why I would be angry in the situation. I am not angry because of the crowds that I hate but can't control. I'm not angry because of the people that play music on the train when I would prefer quiet. I am angry because the door-stander caused an actual negative consequence in my life, beyond "i don't like it and can't control it".
Now, unlike you, and most people according to you, I can separate my emotions and look at them. If the case was that the door stopper was not just gawking, but in fact had a stroke (speaking of jumping to extremes... this is a different case alread, seriously, gawking is a choice to stop the door whereas I presume stroke is not but I will set aside this completely irrational comparison for now), I would in fact still be angry that I missed the train and the fare. I would also feel sad for the sufferer and his family, that can seriously affect the life. I would also understand if they were angry, the whole situation has some pretty negative consequences for them (you on the other hand would apparently tell them its their own fault and they shouldn't be angry). If I was actively hindering or getting in the way of EMTs and other people who could help the sufferer and make the whole thing run smoothly, yes I would feel a bit of shame, as hindering that process, intentionally or not has negative consequences for that person. When I found out it was not that person's choice to block the door, I would no longer be angry towards them. Note however: the anger at missing the train and related consequences didn't go away.
Now back to the difference between as stroke and a choice to stand and gawk. They are fundamentally different as one is the choice made by a person and the other is something happening to a person (if they somehow were trying to commit suicide by stroke, it collapses back to the door blocker by choice scenario). If a person makes a choice to do something that has negative consequences to me, I will be angry because those consequences are not just falling out of the universe, they are the result of intent.
I still think you are just trying to set up your world so that you can act as you choose and tell other people that you are strictly in the right at all times. Basically you don't seem to think there is any difference between the results of your actions and the results of the weather. This is silly. Every person who participates and thus reaps benefit from society also has a certain amount of responsibility to act in the interest of that society, aka not gawking in doorways affecting many instances of missed train.
Finally: what harm comes to the world if I am angry towards a person doing harm to me? Seriously, you seem so against anger, but who cares if anger happens? It certainly does nothing to harm anyone, no matter how much anger I direct at them. Should I act on that anger, perhaps there could be harm but not just from being angry.
First, you bring up a different subject: Are we talking about freeway signs or sidewalks? I was going with the sidewalk examples. Why should the same rules apply? Why would you be angry if a walker on a sidewalk was not following the same rules as a car driver on a freeway? It is insensible anyway: humans are not equipped with turn signals, although sometimes I wish they were. ;)
Let's talk about road rage now. In the presence of signs that clearly state "slower traffic keep right", why would you be angry if someone drives slower on the left? Sure, they are disobeying traffic signs, breaking the law, etc, but why is that your concern? What gives you the authority to "punish" (honking horns, riding a lawbreaker's tail, giving the finger on your way by, swerving angrily around to indicate your opinion, etc)?
No, the signs are not products of self-absorbed narcissists, not for these situations; those individuals may very well fit that profile in spite of the signs, but we do not have direct evidence of that in any scenario described so far. The anger reaction from the perceived slight in these circumstances is.
Ironically, when we talk about narcissism, we probably need to self-analyze, too. All of us have a certain amount of it, or we would not be gracing the rest of the Internet public with the bounties of our posts, believing that people might actually care about our opinions. :)
Are you joking? If somebody is driving slowly in the left lane, they are creating an unsafe traffic condition. It isn't wrong simply because there are signs saying not to do it, it's wrong specifically because it negatively effects other drivers on the road.
Furthermore, honking your horn is not "punishment", it's a form of communication.
It is surely wrong if the person is traveling below the lower speed limit (be it specified explicitly or legally in the absence of the lower speed limit markers). Otherwise, it is just other people being impatient, and their reactions -- such as abruptly swerving around the driver or making a lot of distracting noise -- also cause the unsafe traffic condition.
Note carefully my point, as it ties to my first post: Both actors involved are at fault. Both actors involved are assured they are right. Both actors exhibit negative, antisocial, and unsafe behavior. Neither is an angel; neither is "better".
Laws and legal speed limits have nothing to do with it. (however: in many areas the person traveling at slow 'regular' speed in the left lane would be breaking the law. In many areas the left lane is explicitly for people traveling faster than the speed limit (read: passing)).
^where slowly is defined as relative to the rest of traffic.
Contrary to what you say, the signal provided by the honking horn - while certainly negative - is actually pro-social and pro-safety, in that it's prompting an anti-social and dangerous actor to change his behavior.
Obviously, if this corrective behavior extends to aggressive tail-gating, screaming and yelling, brandishing firearms, or any other objectively dangerous act that makes the honker a part of the problem, then yes, they're both in the wrong. Once the honker's response escalates to actual rage, then he is - almost by definition - more dangerous than the trigger.
However, if the necessary negative feedback is provided with a reasonable measure of restraint (i.e. one that's likely to reduce, and not exacerbate the larger problem) then it's a good thing for everyone. Indeed, the willingness to assert yourself for the sake of safety in situations where others are distracted to the point of becoming general impediments is something that distinguished good drivers from bad.
And yes, promoting good flow is synonymous with promoting safety. There is an inverse relationship between the quality of flow and the likelihood of a collision.
First, the only rule of the road generally recognized, followed or not, is the letter of the law. What some random Internet guy thinks should also be a rule of the road, even if he is 100% right, does not matter. As someone else mentioned, that is politics.
Second, the key point I have been trying to make in this scenario is that honking your horn (or whatever reaction) is a reflection of your narcissism, your self-absorption. You feel entitled to attempt to control somebody else in order to get your way (even if you rationalize your way to be "for the good of others around me"). Sometimes that control is okay.
The entire thread regards angry reactions. We are angry when something happens that is out of our control, out of our perfect little plan for the world. We are angry because it should go our way.
I really sincerely hope that you do not have your drivers license, because that is incredibly wrong.
Firstly, the statement "the only rule of the road generally recognized, followed or not, is the letter of the law." genuinely does concern me.
Secondly, I feel that anyone who seriously suggests that signaling your alarm to other drivers in unsafe situations is a display of narcissism is not actually interested in an intelligent conversation, and is probably a troll.
Most people around here don't trust that the engineers who plan roads have some sense of what they're doing. :)
Drivers have time to react at 60.
Interestingly, iirc the exception to this was North Dakota. As I recall there were plenty of 70-80mph segments there (still low, but with the 5mph tolerance it was reasonable).
My perceived rule is that no two bodies can occupy the same space at the same time. Perhaps you've heard of it?
On a more general note, my personal theory is that eye contact has a lot to do with it, subconsciously or otherwise. I tend to walk while scanning around a lot, and people will never acknowledge my existence (perhaps they perceive that I've seen them and will be the one to take evasive action). If I steadfastly refuse to acknowledge them though, such as look in the direction of my companion the entire time, they'll usually adjust their direction.
Sometimes I'll alternate strategies, just to see how consistent it is. This probably makes me a "rager" as defined in the article, or maybe just an arsehole.
In my experience (having lived in San Francisco and New York) there are two types of people who trigger this:
1) People who are so self-absorbed that it doesn't even appear to register in their minds that there are actually other people in the city or on the road. Into this group would fall some cell-phone users, arrogant business-types, stroller-pushers, escalator-blockers, etc.
2) People who feel powerless in their own lives, and intentionally cause grief as a passive-aggressive way of asserting dominance over others without really breaking the law. Typically urban poor and out-of-town youths.
Lest anyone get the wrong idea, I don't think everyone needs to have the same conception of city etiquette as I do. I'm just describing one of the (little) drawbacks to living in a crowded city for someone with my personality.
It would be different if the author acknowledged that the people triggering exasperation were, in fact, behaving badly. Instead, he seems to dismiss any sense of socially cohesive conduct as something mysterious, arbitrary, and possibly dangerous. It's easy to read the whole thing as a passive-aggressive defense of passive-aggressive jerks.
The one in a million who actually go ballistic are outliers. The PA types who trigger them - though a minority - are exponentially more common, and an irritation for everybody.
The sense of exasperation arises out of a state of mind that is easily disturbed and ruffled. Whatever skills one can gain from being 'at one' with the crowd will translate into the rest of their lives, and improve the relationship with their loved ones.
I "know" China and Chinese people so the way people in massive crowds walk in China is no surprise to me but at that Expo, with its massive-even-for-China crowds and sardine-like packed spacing I lost it a couple of times.
The Chinese idea of personal space is already a challenge for most from the West but pack the place nuts to butts with way too many people, throw in the utter disregard for lines that many in China have and it's a recipe for tension for most foreigners. My breaking point was when people started to shove and push my 9 year old daughter (as she was the weakest link in our group).
I got yelled at when I squared my shoulders and bulled through a line, kids and wife in tow, that (for lack of someone providing a foot of space) would have otherwise required a quarter-mile detour and I admit I feel a bit bad about that. Heck, just standing still I knocked a guy flat on his back (I got tired of being the only one, seemingly, moving out of the way when I walked so as an experiment I decided to walk from point A to B in a straight line. There was a small group headed my way and when we got close I simply stopped and stood my ground. When they collided with me people went flying as I'm a very big guy and they were not). The folks that ran into me thought it was hilarious. I was a bit steamed.
I guess it takes a bit of a push to get me going but I have some of that rage lurking in me. Makes me feel the need to excise it, lol.
In Moscow, which has one of the busiest subway systems in the world, you learn as a child to stand on the right and let people pass on the left, regardless of how crowded or empty the escalator is. There are occasional loudspeaker reminders of that rule. When I moved to the States, it exasperated me that people would block the entire escalator and wouldn't even think of budging, being completely oblivious of other people and their needs.
Another recent example -- I was late to a meeting and had to navigate through a long corridor, which was reasonably empty and wide enough for 6 people to walk shoulder to shoulder. No problem, except for a lady in front of me, who not only walked just fast enough that I couldn't execute a quick maneuver to pass her, but also did not walk in a straight path and instead oscillated quickly and unpredictably. We walked for half the length of this passage, before I finally had an opening to pass her.
Generally, slow walkers are not a problem. Slow walkers in narrow passages that act as if they're a sole Earth inhabitant -- are.
Well, there are.
How about the Shoulder-to-Shoulder Walkers: the obstructionist quartet of parallel dimwits.
Or guy who likes to stand in the middle of the moving walk way when I am running to board a flight (bonus if he has no luggage.)
One that gets me: riding in a business district right next to open shop doors--someone could walk out and get seriously injured. For these cyclists, I will sometimes step in front of them (if I can safely) and nicely tell them to take it to the street.
However, far worse than pedestrian ragers are car ragers. There's something about being isolated in a bubble that turns ordinary people into ragers. And some of these car ragers believe that bicycles belong on sidewalks and deliberately endanger bicyclist lives to force them onto the sidewalk.
There's no easy solution, but one is simply more bicyclists, making bicyclists a common site on roads.
The intra-sidewalk issue of various pedestrians wandering around aimlessly, stopping randomly, walking inexplicably slowly &c. is the studied topic.
I must admit, I get quite frustrated with the above though not to the point of being angry let alone enraged. I've always imagined that city people are better at passively taking others into account when moving but that might make an interesting study as well.
I've lived both in London and Oxford now, and in both these cities (but especially Oxford) there seems to be no default side of the road/sidewalk to walk on, or for passing people, leading to all kinds of interesting situations.
There is less bumping into one another here, probably, because most people here seem quite polite, but 'after you, no after you', and 'left-right-left dancing, as two people approach one another from opposite directions and consider on which side to pass', are quite commonly observed :)
I wonder how the left VS right side of the road issue + the idea that pedestrians should walk on the other side than traffic, so they can see cars coming - forked on top of it, works out in other, similar places, and whether it could lead to different local optima ?
Checkout-Line Rage: When you empty your shopping cart with only one hand because you're on the phone. When you don't step forward to enable the next person to emply her cart. When you take 27 items through the express line. When you pay by credit/debit/check/etc. and don't know how. When you use coupons.
Movie Theater Rage: When you enter the theater 5 minutes after the movie started and complain you can't find a seat. When you talk during the movie. When you text during the movie. When you bring your baby. When you put your feet on my chair, next to my head. When you say, "Here comes the scene where the car hits him!"
Neighbor Rage: When your yard sale visitors block my driveway. When your idiot kid shovels your snow onto my driveway. When your dog shits on my lawn. When you play any Rick Astley song while you wash your car.
Work Rage: When you put the empty coffee pot on a hot burner. When you leave your fish sandwich in the refrigerator for 3 weeks. When you touch every donut just to see what they are. When you buy the last Snickers from the vending machine. When you wear too much fragrence. When you bitch about others wearing too much fragrence.
Previous Programmer Rage: When you name all your variables x, xx, xxx, and xxxx. When you have the exact same code 9 times in the same program and I only changed 8 of them. When you document anything 4 different places, all of them differently. When you promote your code before bothering to test for outlying cases. When you don't sign your work so I don't know who to bitch about.
Also, when you put your name anywhere in the file, since not only the code is going to outlive you career there, I can get more detailed information from the VCS. It's like a badly drawn graffiti tag.
Actually, when I worked with UniBASIC/Datatel, VCS was basically impossible because the architecture was so bizarre. Unless I wanted to write my own, and of course I had actual tasks I was trying to accomplish and writing a VCS was not really worth it if I couldn't get anyone else to use it.
Better to adopt the habit of copying database records (which doubled as source files) with a note of the date and my initials, since that's how it was done. Well, also I did quit.
But our vendor had their own deployment system, and there was zero chance of them sending us Git patches instead of their proprietary ones, and most of what we did was integrate patches from the vendor into our code. So really I took the only option available to me.
X Rage: when you're inconsiderate toward others.
X Rage: The act of getting angry with those who are inconsiderate and unfollowing of situational norms for X?
Unlike many of your other examples I'm not sure I see how someone using coupons could be considered inconsiderate towards you. It's not like they have a faster option (aside from paying more).
Regular coupons can just be instantly scanned by the bar code reader and take no time at all.