Why So Angry? Avoid Street Fights While Talking on the Phone
Sidewalk Rage, measuring lockdown fury: The expected trouble never comes — until you forget to look
My “peaceful place” is dog-walking — the last spot I expected to encounter “sidewalk rage.”
“Our streets and sidewalks aren’t really ideally designed for a lot of walking,” Bill Lindeke, an urban geographer, told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. “A lot of cities that are designed for walking have much wider sidewalks than we do in the United States.”
Ditto for “social distancing” on hiking trails. We all know about “road rage” and how to avoid it, but I didn’t realize “sidewalk rage” was a real “thing” until I encountered it on our nearby portion of Michigan’s Lakeland Trail.
Early in the pandemic, the crowds exploded, particularly on Sundays. Some weekdays you can have the trail to yourself, but I encountered two rather agitated dog walkers on a particularly bitter cold Saturday spring morning.
How we express fury: Pedestrian Aggressiveness Syndrome
Researchers developed a Pedestrian Aggressiveness Syndrome Scale to measure the ways people “express fury” while walking. In the most extreme cases, scientists say some…
