Is there a generational gap in manners at pedestrian crossings? - Joe Bennett

Has the unspoken etiquette around pedestrian crossings changed? Photo / 123rf

You are driving. You approach a pedestrian crossing. A woman is waiting at the kerb.

She has a bag, a coat and a slight stoop, and the wind is distressing her hair. She looks in need of home and a cup of tea. She has not yet set foot on the crossing.

What to do? It is barely a question. I don’t know if the law of the land requires it but the moral law is unequivocal.

You stop. You are, after all, at ease.

You are warm and sheltered from the vagaries of weather. Effectively you are nobility, and noblesse oblige. Besides it costs you next to nothing to stop. And not to stop would cost you your sense of your own decency.

You make a point of coming gently to a halt with no suggestion of impatience and you catch the eye of the woman waiting. You smile and perhaps you flick an invitational eyebrow to grant the right of way.

Or, if you feel more flamboyant, you gesture with a sweep of the hand that the crossing ahead is hers and hers alone, as if you were Walter Raleigh and she the Queen of England.

And in all probability, she responds. Not just by setting off across the road but by a nod of the head or a little wave of thanks, or even with a smile.

And though you did not seek reward – except to save yourself from inner censure – that’s your reward and it is not a slight one.

For it acknowledges that by your tiny act of generosity, you’ve recognised another human being and raised her just a fraction on the pedestal of worth.

And she in turn has felt the urge to thank you with a smile or wave, an act of benison that honours both the thanker and the thanked.

And thus the moment has added to the sum of human happiness. It’s known as manners, the social code that lubricates the way between us, that allows us to slide past each other in a public setting and to feel that we’ve been noticed and regarded.

It’s a vocabulary of please and thank you and after you, and it is drummed in young. Or so I thought.

For come with me now to the leafy campus of a university across which I had to drive the other day.

The speed limit is 20km/h. Pedestrian crossings are abundant. And at the first of them a party of three students is nearing the kerb. I slow, then stop and look at them as if to say all yours.

They do not look at me. Nor do they break their stride. They seem to have assumed that I will stop and they’ll have right of way. They march across in front of me and carry on a conversation and do not look my way at all. It’s clear they have forgotten me.

Ah well, I think, the young are self-absorbed, and no doubt their conversation seemed a thing of great importance.

A hundred metres on, another crossing. This time a tall young man in shorts. He glances my way to ensure I’m stopping and then marches out across my bows without acknowledgment of any sort that I have ceded my priorities for his.

He pays attention to his cellphone. Momentarily I think of startling his rudeness with the horn, but don’t.

Can it be that manners have declined among the young? Or was I like that at 20? Perhaps. I don’t recall. Though I do remember knowing for a fact that everybody over 30 was as good as dead already and devoid of interest.

The next two crossings are the same – I stop and am completely blanked by kids a third my age.

But then at crossing number five there stands a lass in a cherry-red T-shirt. I stop. I do a Walter Raleigh wave.

She smiles and flutters fingers to say thank you. After the previous four crossings I feel this needs acknowledgment and I do a stupid thing.

I wind the window down and tell her she’s the first person on campus to have thanked me for stopping.

She looks at me in understandable surprise. I’m not convinced she’s made out what I said, but she doesn’t ask me to repeat it. Rather, she takes in my bald skull, my ravaged face, then turns and runs.

Just as you would do, I consider running after her to explain, but my wind is not what it was. I drive on.