On 2005-04-04, electroscopillan wrote:

"Rosalie B." wrote in message

But walking I always walk facing the traffic. So I wonder if these
were people that normally walked,

I imagine that is their rationale - though it is a little frightening. I
guess it puts *them* in control of being able to swerve out of the way or
not (from visibly oncoming traffic) instead of contending with the constant
stream of cars coming up ones backside.

The theory behind having pedestrians walk facing traffic is that they
can step sideways if a car comes barreling toward them obviously out
of control. Unfortunately, bikes can't step sideways, and a head-on
crash adds the speed of the two vehicles, so bicyclists are much
better off going in the same direction as traffic. Even more
important than the reduced difference in speed is that most motorists
only look for traffic in one direction at intersections, and
bicyclists on the wrong side of the road will not be seen by turning
motorists. Pedestrians also have some risk from this, but are much
slower moving so are less likely to "appear from nowhere".

------------------------------------------------------------
Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
Professor of Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics
(Senior member, IEEE) (Board of Directors, ISCB)
life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels)
Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed)
Affiliations for identification only.