NZ Standard for pedestrian etiquetteIt would be fair to say that the Standards NZ monthly magazine is possibly the 'dryest' of monthly periodicals that turns up on my desk each month.

This month, however, there was an article that touched on a subject close to my heart: pedestrian etiquette. Poor walkers, particularly those with no sense of space, speed or courtesy, drive me nuts. I'm not a walk-at-a-million-miles-an-hour-guy, but I do have long legs, and outpace most people, so to get stuck behind three people out for a leisurely stroll down Lambton Quay at lunchtime (as I did yesterday), while dozens of other people bank up behind them looking for somewhere to pass as the usual throng of people whizz past in the opposite direction ... well, it makes my blood boil.

Now, it has to be said, that most people aren't bad at obeying the fairly simple rules that make walking about town that much easier: keep left, don't stop randomly, check behind before veering into a store so as to not collide with a power-walking exec late for some meeting...

But many, as with the slow-walking-three-abreast-trio I described above, just plainly don't, and, as the Standards article points out, much to my nodding agreement...

At lunchtime, Wellington City centre, is a nightmare, many people can't seem to grasp the basics of good pedestrian etiquette. For example, couples walk at half-speed hand-in-hand on the right side of the footpath.

So Standards New Zealand are looking at introducing somthing similar to the Road Code for footpaths, in what they think will be a world first. The Standard will cover such things as keeping left (unless overtaking), guidelines for acceptable places to stop to have a conversation, and potentially more controversial measures such as banning prams during rush hour, a compulsory speed for walking on escalators (why is it that some people's legs stop functioning on escalators?), and instant fines for people failing to maintain a 'reasonable pace'. Bring. It. On.

Standards also speculates that our flourishing tourism industry is adding to our footpath chaos...

We believe that much of the 'wrong side of the footpath' behaviour involves foreign tourists, so SNZ is looking at ways that the new Standard can be distributed to visitors when they clear customs.

The proposed date for the introduction of this Standard is April 2006, but I haven't (perhaps, because of the specific publication date - see the larger version of the scanned article) seen any sign of the Standard being pre-emptively observed by the lunch-time population of the Wellington CBD.

Maybe we need to look more seriously at those instant fines.
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