Walk and use a mobile at the same time? No

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/16/urban-life-give-and-take

Walk and use a mobile at the same time? No

Elizabeth Day

One of the first things I learned when I moved to London 14 years ago was how to walk in the city. I'd grown up in the countryside, where walking was aimless and hearty and generally involved sheep and rain and dispiriting picnics aborted because of the midges.

In big cities, I realised, a different kind of perambulation was required. I learned to be brisk and purposeful. These days, I honestly believe urban walking is one of my core skills. If I were taking an A-Level in walking, I would get an A* and not just because of grade inflation. 

I keep up a steady, fairly rapid pace. I am able to spot potential hazards before they occur - people holding clipboards, those unexplained men who keep asking me about where I have my hair cut, the women who hand out free samples of moisturiser in packets so small they are all but naked to the human eye - and I change my course accordingly. I'll always take the left-hand (walking) side of the escalator. I've perfected a sort of Walking Bitch Face so that no one disturbs me as I stride with intent towards my destination.

I'm an efficient walking multitasker: when I'm approaching a tube station, I fish out my Oyster card from my bag while still moving so that my progress at the gates is smooth and unimpeded and causes minimal fuss for the people behind me. You see, the mark of a true urbanite: selfish and communal at the same time.

But of late, I've noticed a worrying trend. Until relatively recently, the pavements have mostly been populated by people like me hellbent on getting wherever they need to be in as straight a line as possible. Of course, there was always the annual influx of tourists to cope with: those baffled looking types in theme-park kagouls who would clutter up our trajectory by stopping without warning to consult a map or enter an Angus Steakhouse.

This summer, however, there has been a distinct uptick in the home-grown Selfish Walker. The prime offenders are those glued to their smartphones - the ones who walk while sending a WhatsApp or while locating someone to have sex with on Tinder or while finding the most flattering filter on Instagram to upload a picture of themselves walking and being on the phone at the same time. 

These pedestrians, perpetually engrossed in their blinking white screens, mosey around in a haze of Snapchat and Spotify with severely limited spatial awareness of the real world. They don't care about time or speed or where the rest of us need to get to because they believe that what they are doing, at that given moment in time, should take precedence. There is no sense of the pavement being a communal space, governed by an unspoken code of conduct that puts the needs of the many above the Tweets of a few.

So they amble on, wallowing in self-absorption, speed slackening until they're practically standing still (which would actually be preferable). And they don't notice or care about the gathering crowd behind them seeking to overtake. They don't realise they are operating at 33rpm in a 45rpm world, or whatever the equivalent is on iTunes. They will stop suddenly without checking who is behind them and look up, blank-faced and witless, when challenged.

It's not just smartphone users. It's the couples holding hands and blocking the thoroughfare, headily caught up in the glow of their own romance. It's the teenagers with a selfie stick. It's the bearded hipster reading a book on manga cartoons as he walks, as if to signpost his own intellect. Hold hands, take photographs and read by all means. But not if you're getting in the way of everyone else.

We live in an age of entitlement, forged through our constant connectedness. Uploading photos on Facebook and curating our experiences so that we look like we are having the most fun possible at every conceivable moment has led to a sense that we are the central star vehicle in a dazzling story of our own projected life. The attention we pay ourselves nudges out the willingness to care about other people. We treat the pavement as a private space in which to exercise our public selves. We lose sight of the fact someone else might just need to catch a bus.

It's not an unsolvable problem. There has long been talk of a kind of swimming lane system for some of the busiest streets in London. The tunnels at Oxford Circus tube station have recently been divided into two lanes painted on to the floor as part of an advertising campaign for Lucozade. One lane is labelled "slow", the other "flow". It's a neat concept, but it hasn't quite worked: everyone is too busy on their phones to notice what's beneath their feet.

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These people are also a danger unto themselves. They barge cross the road without even a cursory glance at the traffic and expect drivers to take the responsbility of not killing them! They're suicide jockeys, imo.