Dear San Francisco: Please walk to the right on sidewalks We live in a society

In a crowded urban environment, some situations require a complicated dance to navigate, but passing another human on the sidewalk is not one of them. You have three choices: left, right or … In a crowded urban environment, some situations require a complicated dance to navigate, but passing another human on the sidewalk is not one of them. You have three choices: left, right or … Photo: Daniel Fishel Photo: Daniel Fishel Image 1 of / 19 Caption Close Dear San Francisco: Please walk to the right on sidewalks 1 / 19 Back to Gallery

There is perhaps no simpler human act than walking. Even before a baby can construct a sentence, they balance on two feet and stagger forward. Yet somehow, people in San Francisco can’t figure out how to do it correctly.

As a newcomer to the city, I’ve felt shocked by many things I see on the sidewalk, but nothing perplexes me more than people’s inability to follow the universally accepted rule that when two people walk towards each other, they pass on the right.

In a crowded urban environment, some situations require a complicated dance to navigate, but passing another human on the sidewalk is not one of them.

You have three choices: left, right or …

… maybe right but what about left or which way are you going how about we just waddle back and forth like bored penguins or an NBA point guard trying to break a defender’s ankles or two humans that don’t understand how to effectively travel one block without a collision or nonverbal debate.

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I concede that in specific circumstances when sidewalkers’ trajectories require significant adjustment to pass on the right, it’s acceptable to go left. But as an adult male with more than 30 years of experience walking on pavement, I have never in my life stepped into as many droitwiches as during my six months in San Francisco.

For those unfamiliar with the term “droitwich,” “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” author Douglas Adams coined the word in his 1983 book “The Meaning of Liff.” It’s defined as such:

“A street dance. The two partners approach from opposite directions and try politely to get out of each other's way. They step to the left, step to the right, apologise, step to the left again, apologise again, bump into each other and repeat as often as unnecessary.”

The key word there is “unnecessary.”

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People who have patiently pretended to listen to my complaints have a few ideas as to why San Franciscans can’t seem to choose a direction in which to walk. One has to do with the amount of foreigners in the city who may have been raised with different customs. Several Quora users have questioned whether British people veer left based on their flow of car traffic. Responses are mixed, but there is no law regarding sidewalk trajectory on the books. Australia’s government does dictate a leftward path, but thankfully the influx of immigrants has disrupted their unreasonable traditions.

Another idea of why San Franciscans can’t understand this fundamental truth of existing in a public space is because of our phones. With your head in an iPhone, people approaching in the periphery aren’t noticed until it’s too late to sensibly adjust your path just a few degrees to the right, sending the entire system into chaos while Steve Jobs rolls over in his brushed-metal grave.

Personally, I think it has something to do with entitlement. Coming from Texas where we have a healthy fear of steel vehicles that weigh three tons, I’ve found the bravado of Bay Area pedestrians inexplicable. A crosswalk is not some invincible zone with parallel lines that deflect oncoming traffic, but San Franciscans seem to think anytime they’re within stone’s throw of a corner, cars should enable their parking brake and wait at bated breath for them to cross.

More than once a driver has screamed at me slowing my walk to a corner so that a car can pass, to which I replied, “Hey, I’m not walking here!” Although I do concede that Pedestrian God Mode feels satisfying, even I believe we should all agree to embrace polytheism and realize that when one of us succeeds at walking down the sidewalk without colliding into another omnipotent pedestrian, we all win.

Although I certainly feel like I’m screaming into the void of oblivious left-walkers here, my hope for this story is that it unlocks some deep-rooted principle in San Francisco residents, one we all understand to be for society’s best interest, but which has somehow been lost in cultural translation, hijacked by our cell phones or simply lulled into remission by a false sense of solipsistic superiority.

In closing, we live in a society. Let’s walk like it.

Dan Gentile is a digital editor at SFGATE. Email: Dan.Gentile@sfgate.com | Twitter: @Dannosphere