[CalRobert]

Some people are inconsiderate :-( . Some of those people ride bikes. I've been annoyed at bicyclists while walking along holding my helmet just after docking my Dublinbike, even.

But a jerk walking is virtually certainly not going to kill me (or my kid). A jerk cycling almost certainly won't either. But a jerk driving quite possibly will - after all, where I come from there's a 9/11 on the roads every month due to drivers, and the dead are disproportionately people walking or cycling.

Of course, 100 years ago the streets were for walking (or horses, bikes, early autos, whathaveyou) and it was quite a feat that auto makers convinced people that only folks inside cars deserved to use 90% of it (all of it, in much of the US), and that it was perfectly normal to leave people walking clinging on to a shred of space at the edge.

[Noos]

Actually a jerk walking may kill you and your kid...its called "mugging" which can happen when you walk places, and which really can't happen easily if you are in a car. And there are many areas in an average city where it's completely unsafe to walk in.

And keep in mind, it's a lot more dangerous for a woman to walk alone than the average HN poster, especially if they need to do so at night.

[dragonwriter]

> Actually a jerk walking may kill you and your kid...its called "mugging" which can happen when you walk places, and which really can't happen easily if you are in a car.

“Mugging” can't happen in a car only in the sense that when it happens to people in a car, it is called “carjacking” instead of “mugging”.

[Noos]

It's a lot harder to carjack someone than to mug, to be honest. Colleges in particular tend to be pretty serious about the risks of danger of being accosted,to the point of littering the campus with callboxes and maintaining a security staff. My point though is that it's not always a one to one comparison; walking has unique dangers to it.

[CalRobert]

That's a question of intent, and in my mind a different matter. I meant jerk as in inconsiderate, not murderous.