Treatment of Pedestrians in the US: Late 1990's vs. Today

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The hate I got was in an isolated suburb in the Midwest, near the border of a very large high school district. And it wasn't just getting the middle finger. It was a angry, vicious hate, like I described in earlier posts. Especially if I walked on roads that led to the shopping mall. To avoid getting garbage thrown at me from passing cars while walking to the library, I had to take a big detour through a neighboring school district. City buses did not run frequently enough to be of any help. When I was able to catch one, I felt very safe, since everybody at school avoided them like the plague.

Now, all this hate and hostility seems to have disappeared. I have no idea why. But I'm giving at least some of the credit to the loosening of concealed carry restrictions in my state. Hey, you never know.

As for my "California or Texas" rant, I picked states highly car-oriented states with large populations. Plus, I've been reading real estate blogs (because I want to move to Florida), and they lambaste those states for being hostile to pedestrians. Many bloggers wrote examples like mine. But I'm sure things are no different in most Sun Belt states that grew after World War II, so it's not meant to be directed specifically at those two.

Plus, maybe in your case, what kept you safe are the relatively lax carry laws in Texas (compared to some other states, including California). After all, drivers are hesitant to harass a pedestrian who might be packing heat, and I'm not talking about the 100-degree temperature.

I must admit I don't know much at all about firearms carrying laws as I never owned a gun, even in Texas.

I'll take your word for it as I'm sure it's probably the case, although I noticed drivers behind the wheel still getting road rage at other drivers, without worrying first if the other guy has a gun, so, I dunno, even knowing someone might be packing heat might not prevent people from acting aggressive to someone.

I'll also add that although those real estate bloggers claimed that Texas is not pedestrian friendly, are you sure they didn't just mean that very often a sidewalk is not built on some roadways? Rather than meaning that pedestrians get yelled at and abused or looked down on?

That's one thing I noticed -- many streets in my city had inadequate sidewalks, sometimes none and sometimes only at one side of the street but not both. This was mostly in residential streets, where there may sometimes not be one at all, just people's lawns ending directly at the concrete kerb/the street.

So, "Not pedestrian friendly" can refer to just "inadequate provision for pedestrians" and not necessarily "People are mean to pedestrians."

Another thought I'm having is that Texas -- and California too for that matter -- are massive states, physically. Texas is such a huge place that what is commonly true of one city, town, county or region won't be true at all of another. Seriously, going from one city to another, or one region is like going to another country, or at least another state. The way people behave in Austin is not quite the way they behave in Dallas, or Abilene, or Marfa. Even within a city, there may be a different culture regarding driving and pedestrians.

The inner downtown of Austin, for example, does having people walking about a lot, as does the university area, as in the campus region strolling about is the name of the game. But go out toward Barton Creek Mall and it's a tanlge of freeways, and the only people walking there is if they've had the misfortune to break down on the freeway.

So, it's such a HUGE place that you can't really talk about Texas in absolutes; there's a massive diversity all over the state, of people, cultures, what the cities are like, etc.

Until a few days ago, open carry was outright banned. Even now, it won't take effect until the end of the year, I think. Not only that, of those states that did ban open carry, Texas was the first to do so (about 125 years ago).

As for concealed carry, that is relatively recent as well (1996).

Prior to that, it was illegal to carry handguns in Texas except for a narrow range of purposes (like when traveling, going to and from a firing range, going to and from a gun store, ... .