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Comment by OfSanguineFire | Hacker News Reader

Anecdotes from recent-ish visits to the US, I’m curious how representative these might seem to Americans: when walking in a Southern California suburb, from my hotel to a supermarket about 3 km away and back, all along perfectly decent (but empty) sidewalks, I was stopped by a police officer who wanted to run my ID for warrants. When I asked why I had been stopped, he said "People don’t walk here. I thought it looked suspicious.”

In two separate visits to Alabama, whenever I walked a couple of kilometers from where I was staying to the closest shop, a driver passing by called out "f-ggot!". I had been warned beforehand that people don’t walk there, and my local contacts all agreed that that slur was due only to the fact that I was walking. My ultimate conclusion was that unless you live in a community where people do walk, walking anywhere in the US comes with social stigma, and people are reluctant to be seen as weirdos.

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US citizen here in New England, I've had people flip me off twice, throw stuff at me twice (both times empty chewing tobacco containers), and yell at me many times over the past three years of regular walking.

Harassment from drivers is not an every day occurrence but it's not uncommon. Anecdata and I don't know how it compares to other nations.

More anecdata: When Bill Bryson moved back to the US for a time, he specifically chose a walkable place to live -- Hanover, NH. He reported in his book, I'm A Stranger Here Myself, that he had been stopped by concerned neighbors on multiple occasions, offering him a ride. They were perplexed as to why he'd choose to walk.

Another: I heard a story on a podcast a few years ago about a woman who, in pouring rain, chose to drive to a PTA meeting at her child's school rather than walk. Now, this would make sense in most circumstances, but this woman's front door was quite close to the school entrance -- closer, in fact, than the school's parking lot was. By driving, she actually increased how far she walked.

There's a lot of ingrained driving culture in the US, unfortunately, and I'm sure that WFH and transit avoidance in a post-COVID world have made it that much worse.

>> He reported in his book, I'm A Stranger Here Myself, that he had been stopped by concerned neighbors on multiple occasions, offering him a ride

That has happened to me before in a scenario similar to the original poster's scenario, walking between a hotel and supermarket. This was in Texas. Perfectly polite, they probably just assumed that my car was in the shop.

If you wanted to walk in peace in a neighborhood like that you would need to get a dog.

She was inadvertently healthy, lmao

I've gotten a "why didn't you go through the drive-through?" on occasion walking in to fast food places after using an app to order. I can't even use the "wait until near to start cooking" option because the distance would be seconds to minutes by car and they assume everyone's driving.

Then there are the places that are drive-through only and don't bother to update their listings on map apps or even the company's own store finder. If you won't pay enough to find enough staff to open for walk-ins after several months, it's time to admit you're drive-through only and update the listings. Walkers famously value our lungs and don't want to stand in line behind cars, and would rather walk on somewhere else.

I walk 15-20k steps daily (~12-15km... some of that is running). Have walked or run this much for most of my adult life.

I grew up in Pennsylvania and Ohio, have lived in Texas, Georgia, and California, and spent significant time in the Carolinas, Alabama, and Tennessee. I've never had any problems when I've been on foot. I've had a lot of problems on a bike, though. Had someone try to run my off the road in North Carolina, have had people throw shit at me in California (central coast area), and have had lots of derogatory shit yelled at me (I never knew riding a bike made you gay, I always thought it was something very different!) by people driving by basically everywhere. Most of those happened in places without dedicated biking infrastructure or lanes.

Where I'm at now, in SoCal, I haven't had any problems or otherwise heard anything anecdotally.

Haha, I learned I was gay the same way: Daring to ride a bicycle in rural, red-state Pennsylvania. Who knew a mere bicycle could change one's sexual preference just like that!

You must have very bad luck. I live in the suburbs of the midwest with no sidewalks. Even if we had sidewalks, there's nowhere to walk to (sprawl and all that). So walking isn't really encouraged, but folks do it all the same. Walking their dogs, walking to work... and some of the roads ppl walk on aren't designed for pedestrian traffic. I'd say it's downright dangerous at times. But ppl do what they need to do I guess and nobody hassles 'em for it.

I think bicyclists get the most grief here, mostly because cars don't like sharing the road and bikes tend to slow down traffic.

Yeah, walking in the south has a similar connotation to not being fat in say, old school tribal cultures. It means your poor and up to no good. If you happened to jog that same stretch, no one would mind it. lol

Southern California is a place where people will drive rather than walk a few blocks but then spend a ton of time at the gym.

Alabama is hell.

There are parts of the U.S. where walking is very common. But even there, our car drivers are out of control, and there is very little traffic enforcement.

Had something similar happen to me in San Francisco. While I was walking a driver rolled down their window and shouted "white power" at me (I'm white). Very strange experience. At the time I lived in Chicago, walked everywhere, and never experienced that sort of hostility.

Same trip, I ended up renting a car and going to Bodega Bay where I was again screamed at by a driver who was apparently upset with my driving (this was on the access road to the park). The "f" word was used at me as well.

I'm not sure walking explains it all. There seems to be an abundance of miserable people in this country...

That first part is hilarious

It would be hilarious if it wouldn't be sad.

> Had something similar happen to me in San Francisco. While I was walking a driver rolled down their window and shouted "white power" at me (I'm white). Very strange experience. At the time I lived in Chicago, walked everywhere, and never experienced that sort of hostility.

?? That’s just surreal

This is similar to what I experienced walking around in Ft Lauderdale. You're regarded with suspicion if you're walking, despite there being wide pavements on the street.

no, this is sadly classism at play. the 'you are walking and bad' comes from only poors can't afford a car, and poors are violent. so clearly you walking is a form of violence against the community, so we send out a cop with a right to eliminate you to verify that you aren't as poor as they fear!

it's really cool

My experience is very different because I've never been in a deep red or rural area, and I'm a young-ish white male who presumably doesn't look poor.

But anecdotally, I've never been stopped walking or running anywhere. Occasionally but rarely someone honks or yells out something obnoxious out of a car.

Sidewalks are surprisingly empty though, even in urban areas. Even in Boston, the "third most walk-able city", there are a lot of beautiful places where you just don't see many people.

Its a big country and cities are designed for cars not pedestrians. The expectation is you should be driving. Of course, thats a very different perspective from a European angle where there is more density in cities and generally better public transportation.

US and Europe are, very roughly speaking, the same size in terms of landmass but Europe has more than double the population. So US is "relatively" empty.

Southern Californian suburbs are often "designed for pedestrians" in the sense that they have remarkably smooth sidewalks, with dips at curbs because legislation has long mandated disabled-friendly construction (in that sense the US is ahead of some EU countries). Of course there is the expectation that one should be driving, and it can get tiresome to wait forever at the constant button-operated pedestrian crossings, then have to rush across the six-lane road. But if people don’t walk, it is not due to lack of infastructure.

> But if people don’t walk, it is not due to lack of infastructure.

You can pave sidewalks, people don't walk because the grid of urban "space-time" is too spread apart to access anything by foot. It's not just because of lack of infrastructure sometimes, it's principally because most distances in a urban place with cars are car distances

Loads of Americans find themselves less than two miles from a shop or fast food location. That is a distance that many people in other countries will walk just to get outside and move, and think nothing of it. While in most of the USA sprawl is prohibitive, I suspect that, in many urban locations, people aren’t walking because they think it’s so very far. It’s not far, it’s just that a car and cheap fuel has already made many people lazy.

When people in population centers in other countries walk those distances they may weave from a store into another, along the way. Perhaps that's a reason those distances seem so very far in America, they're boring, visually barren and barren of things to do, there aren't street cafes where a friend or acquaintance might be found by chance.

Even though a suburbs sidewalk is just as "walkable" mechanically, it's much less fun. We don't want simply walkable streets, we don't want to think about walking at all. In modernity, health is an activity and consumer demographic onto itself. Seeing someone jogging in outfit has the air of class that a person simply walking to a destination doesn't have when we look at them, even though the person walking has healthy exercise figured, not as part of their lifestyle, but guaranteed in it.

> I’m curious how representative these might seem to Americans

First example: representative, especially if you have dark skin.

Second example: representative, because Alabama.

Sorry, I am deeply skeptical that the first event happened. The police in the US do not have the right to stop individuals without reasonable suspicion of a crime.

You're wrong both de jure and de facto, but thanks for dropping by.

have you not heard of stop and frisk? bloomberg would love to have a call with you and talk about it!

They still need reasonable suspicion: https://www.findlaw.com/criminal/criminal-rights/what-is-sto....

"Reasonable suspicion" is a joke. The cop writes down that they saw someone in an area known for criminal activity acting in a furtive manner, with something in their pocket whose outline is consistent with the appearance of weapons and/or drugs. Done and done.

They can do whatever they like to harass you, including arrest you. You may or may not have a civil rights case afterwards, but probably not unless their behavior was particularly egregious.

"You can beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride."

I can give you an n=1; I have been detained by police for walking around in a suburb.

I was 18 and in community college. I couldn't drive so relied on rides to and from. Sometimes I had several hours between classes so initially I went for long walks since there wasn't much else to do. There was a quiet neighborhood across the street so I usually walked around there.

That stopped after a cop drove up to me and ordered me to state my business. "What are you doing here?" he asked.

"I'm just walking around," I said. "I-"

"_Why_?" he asked, looking incredulous, like I had just said I had been trying to skateboard on the back of a turtle.

Apparently he had been called because of my "suspicious activity": there were some cool rocks on the shoulder of the road that I had stopped and fussed over. (And probably pocketed, because hey, cool rocks)

There's your reasonable suspicion: college kid picking up interesting stones from the public shoulder of a road.

If Mr. Policeman says you look suspicious, guess who's getting stopped?

Were you actually detained?

I'm not saying the cop can't ask you questions, I'm saying he can't demand your ID and run it for warrants, and you're free to leave that situation if you want.

Come on... Practically, the police can do whatever they want, and it's up to the victim to fight it in court if it was wrong. If an officer wants to detain you without reasonable suspicion, they're going to do it, regardless of whether it is legal. If they want to arrest you without probable cause, they are going to do it.

The OP said they were "detained", and then as evidence cited a story where they were not, in fact, detained.

That feels OK to point out.

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