Walking into people?

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mh, sounds familiar to me.. i can't stand having a lot of people around me, especially when they are all walking. i never know what to do when a person is walking towards me. i try to guess where the person will go next, but they always behave that unlogic and it ends up closer than i like it. all i want to do is to avoid getting too close to any person around me so i often just stop, close my eyes and wait until the situation becomes better (sounds silly, i know, but things like that really get me confused). when i have a good day, i'm running the whole distance through sometimes (they will get out of your way when you are faster than them)

People walk into me all the time and it gets really frustrating. The last person who did that got a bit of a telling off from me as I impolitely pointed out to him that I should be worth a fortune as Im obviously wearing an invisible suit. People really piss me off royally.

The "dance", heh, that is a good way of describing it. I try to adopt the driving convention (of the country I am in) for walking. In Australia we drive on the left-hand side, so in Australia I try to always move towards my left to avoid a collision when someone is walking towards me. If the other person uses the same rule (moves towards their left), then we are both moving away from each other, so it works perfectly.

If a person moves towards their right, then I consider them in the wrong, same as they would be in the wrong when driving on the road here. I stay on the left, frown at them, and require that they correct their direction, which they do.

If there is no space for me to move left (frex if I am walking next to a wall), then I maintain my course and require that the other person move out of my way. If necessary, I will stop to avoid walking into them, but this rarely happens.

When overtaking someone in a situation where there is limited room, I make a conscious decision to overtake them on the right side, again same as the road rules (or obviously overtake on the left if you are in a right-side driving country). This way, when they become aware that I am overtaking them in a tight area, they should know to move left to make room for me to overtake.

Sometimes when I am in an ornery mood, I will walk for a while with my head turned so it looks like I am not paying any attention to where I am walking (although in reality I am still looking with my periphery vision, but other people do not know that). This is very effective in making people move out of my way because they assume that I am unaware of them

But if you are not in an ornery mood, stick to the damn driving conventions for walking as well!! ! And refuse to deviate or change direction if another person fails to obey the convention.

A few years back on Oxford street in central london, which is notorious for selfish city folk walking into you, I decided I'd had enough of this. So when some posh city type with his swanky suit decided to walk into me I decided to lecture him on his GCSE physics lessons reminding him that 2 solid bodies cannot pass through each other. Fat bar-steward I may be but that does not mean you can pass through me like liquid, plus you knocked my bag of newly purchased cd's on the floor now pick them up. Just because you work in the centre of universe doesn't mean common courtesy has to go out of the window

Moral of the story. Don't walk into me or face the wrath of Khan

Well, I was almost run over by a car today when crossing the road. I was very close to being run over. It was difficult considering I was watching another car approaching from the right, and a taxi just beside me on the left which looked like it was going to move back at any moment.

It was as if I had no time to pay attention to the third vehicle just beside me on the right, which was the one that almost ran me over.

But this is where our problems with walking into people could get more serious. With my dyspraxia - I'm in no doubt I have dyspraxia to some degree - I'm still finding things hard.

I believe I'm walking into people more frequent than the average person does. I believe that’s because of my fear of crowds or due to the fact that I'm too much on my own world (although those two are related). Also, I’m always the only one that says “sorry”…and it’s not (obviously) always my fault

I walk into people and objects from time to time. I've been more careful in recent years about paying attention to my surroundings.

I've had that happened a lot to me.

The dance has a name, and it is the Polkadodge. The dance, the dodge, the horror!

Do that with someone aggressive, and this will mean picking a fight.

i am way too tired to write an eloquent response, but
you have made my heart so happy by writing this.

Two years after reading everything i could possibly get my hands on about AS, and I am still, STILL finding things that I thought
I was the only one who did that is actually common to all or most Aspies. That is such a wonderful feeling.

I didnt know anyone else did "the dance." I have wondered as long as I can remember why this happens to me.
Most people seem to be able to move out of each other's way so easily.
Me, though, someone comes towards me, I move right, they move right, I move left, they move left, it's the most akward and embarssing thing, we can't get out of each other's way. The whole thing probably only takes seconds, but it happens basically EVERY SINGLE TIME without fail, causing me to wonder what's different about me mentally that I make these errors of judgement .... my guess was perhaps guessing other people's intentions comes harder to us.

It's good not to be alone!
Kate