As much as I walk, I will almost always be on the side of pedestrian rights but there is one habit which I will not support.  There was a several-decades-old trend until the 1990s to not include sidewalks in suburban areas.  This really exacerbated the car-as-the-only-way-to-get-around mentality in most of suburban America.  Pedestrians always need to be alert if they choose to walk on the side of the road, especially in walker-unfriendly cities like Atlanta where the car is king.  People are getting run over all the time from either inattentive or rude drivers.  Cyclists are also victims to this mentality but they at least can speed out of the way of a bad driver, giving them a little bit more of a chance against a wayward car as opposed to a pedestrian.

With all that being said, I do get agitated when I see walkers/runners/joggers walking in the road when they are right next to a sidewalk.  While a sidewalk isn’t a safe haven entirely, it sure reduces your chances of being sideswiped or run over.  Why force a car to be partially in another lane just because you can’t use the sidewalk intended for your purpose?  Even more mind boggling is when I see parents pushing their children’s stroller in the street and there is a sidewalk right next to them.  Now you’re exposing yourself and the future of your family all because you don’t want to run the stroller over the sidewalk cracks?  It’s inexcusable, in my opinion.

If policemen give tickets for jaywalking (an utterly useless citation), then I think a more offensive and dangerous situation is walking in the road next to a sidewalk.  At least with jaywalking you’re only in the road temporarily as opposed to constantly tempting fate.  One of the few drawbacks to the area where I live is that the residential areas that were built decades ago that don’t have sidewalk access.  Supposedly in the next few years every street in Decatur will have at least one side with sidewalks and it can’t come soon enough, as I am forced to walk in the street to get to the park with my daughter in the stroller.  But I must stress I would NOT be in the street if I had a choice.  The route that I go has speed bumps so at least the cars are not speeding recklessly through the neighborhood and most of the drivers are very courteous when they drive by.

I stupidly pushed the envelope while in Chicago in terms of pedestrian rights, where if I had the right of way and a car zoomed past me I’d bang on the window telling them so.  If you want to know cities that are more pedestrian friendly, take note of the downtown areas and the Walk/Don’t Walk signs.  If you have to manually push a button to give you the Walk sign (see Atlanta), pedestrians are second-rate citizens.  The last time I was in Chicago I automatically reached for the lightpost to push a button to cross the street, having totally forgotten than the signs in Chicago are automatic.  Needless to say, I don't try to pull the same crap on Atlanta roads.

The bottom line is, even if a road only has one side with a sidewalk, cross the street and walk on that side both ways.  Don’t tempt fate.