Passing another person

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I recently noticed that this happens to me a lot. I walk in some corridor, on the street, in a shop, whereever, and the inevitable happens: someone walks toward me. I really don't know what to do, and an awkward shifting from left to right to left happens before we finally pass each other (sometimes more cycles occur). Is this something related to Aspergers, or do NT's also have that often? Obviously, most people I do this with are NT's, but I don't know whether it happens to them as often as to me. What about you, does that happen often to you?

I don't know, but I definately notice this too. Sometimes it's a bit awkward when I start to shift to the right when the other person shifts to their left, so I have to shift back. No collisions yet though

I do this constantly. I just laugh and say 'thanks for the dance...' if we bob back and forth more than once or twice. I think it comes from not making regular, casual eye contact. I find I'm usually looking at the ground and only keeping a tab on my surroundings through my peripheral vision. I think I'm missing the body language and eye cues that would let me anticipate another persons intention/ where they were moving.

I think this is why people, in general, do this while in the car. Two people stopped at a turn. They both edge forward and stop and start several times, dancing like two people in a small hallway. Both wave each other thru in an effort to be polite and both aren't sure which is going to move or which should move. I think, because people can't see each other, they lack the ability to read their cue to get out of the way.

So you think this is some intrinsic thing people with Aspergers have because they can't read social cues? Now that you mention it, I don't look into people's eyes when I pass them. I think I just stare ahead. There are actually cues people give off as to show which way they will go first, allowing people to just avoid each other casually instead of wobble back and forth?

I just give them a wild eyed crazy man look and they step aside.

I think all people do it sometimes. I have noticed that I have many more occurrances of 4-6 wobbles where most other peopel seem to do 1 or 2 before they straighten it out. I know mine is because I'm not actively engaging in a passive/attentive way - I don't usually notice people until I need to actively engage them. I don't know if this holds true for everyone with AS - that's just how it works for me.

yes, i do this a lot, but so does the random person i am trying to pass... who is usually an NT. so i'd say this is both an aspie and NT thing.

more commonly though, i bump into them or accidentally don't allow them room to pass as i misjudge the spaces involved.

Am I the only one who thought the title was referring to an unpleasant trip to the toilet?

Some of my female NT classmates has talked about the same issue they also think it can be awkward to pass a person on the street, they even don't know where to look.
They thought you can't just look them in the eyes that's creepy, but if you look away then you are being snobby (that's what we talked about in history class LOL)

I have heard that this probably is due to not being able to read social cues, namely the other person's eyes, yet when I'm passing people in the street there never seem to be any cues, all they are doing is just dashing from A to B as quickly as possible. As far as possible, I pre-empt the awkward left-to-right shifting by adjusting my path well in advance, as soon as I see the person in the distance, so it's not directly running into the other person's path, and continuing to walk forwards. But it probably does happen more to Aspies given the amount of times new users have posted about the exact same thing.

Do you mean you have to move or you will crash into the person and wherever you move they move so it takes forever to get passed them? That has happened to me before. I doubt it has anything to do with AS. It's just one of those moments.
What's really funny is having a shopping cart. This kind of thing happens to me in places like Super Wal Mart when I have the cart in front of me.
What I do is move over long before they get to me. Another thing you can try is pointing right and saying to the person, "I'm moving this way." Then, they know which way you are going so they can move to their right and you can avoid them that way.