Eye contact with strangers passing in the street

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I know there has been threads on this sort of thing before but it's a little different here. I don't have a problem with eye contact when talking to people, any people, whether it's friends, family, neighbours, or even cashiers, bus-drivers, policemen, and the list goes on with that. But when it comes to just passing people in the street, eye contact becomes a big issue for me, and it is that scary to look at them. One of the reasons why it's scary is because I don't like to catch them looking at me so I try not to look at all (although it doesn't really work because I can still ''feel'' it when somebody is staring at me), and the other reason being is that I'm scared I might intimidate them, and sometimes I don't always feel like smiling at every person who goes by, probably because I'm nervous of making eye contact in the first place, so the best thing is to avoid making eye contact all together and pretend they're not there.
But I failed at that the other day, because I saw a woman walking towards me (and I especially turn away when a woman is coming by because I know women can be more bitchy than men and so are more likely to glare at you), and as we were approaching eachother, I pretended to look at her by looking past her shoulder then smiling gently so it looks like I just gave her a friendly look without having to look at her, but then she stopped and put her hand on my shoulder, and I realised she was another volunteer who works at the charity shop where I volunteer. I felt so stupid then because she might have thought I saw her but didn't want to stop, which wasn't the case at all. This is what sometimes happens when you choose not to look at passers at all, because otherwise I don't suffer from faceblindness.

Ironically I find it easier to spot people who I know in busy places, more so than not-so-busy places. When I was younger I never had any trouble with making eye contact with passers, it was just automatic, and I don't think I will ever get back to automatically making eye contact again, now that this extreme social phobia has set in.

Anyone else have or had problems with this? Have you ever thought of a way to overcome it?

When I'm out in public I wear dark glasses to make it easier to not have to make eye contact with random strangers.

I'm NT and sometimes am easily intimidated and don't like making eye contact with people, so I try to wear sunglasses as much as possible when I'm out and about. I feel much more comfortable in them.
Indoors I can't wear them and where I work there are lot of people that I don't know but often see about the building. I tend to nod with a semi-grin and quietly say or mouth "hello" as a greeting. Making eye contact for me isn't as bad at work, only in public.

I'm fine when I'm at my volunteer job. When somebody walks by or enter the room, I find myself looking up at them naturally. But when I'm out in public, it's a different story. The natural ability to make eye contact with people suddenly goes away, and I'd rather not look at anyone at all. Life is so much easier when those sorts of things come natural.

I think you just afraid of someone you doesn't know and who are come from a different environment,afraid of the strangers what are them thinking about you,you just need to become more confident and don't read too much into it,don't think too much of someone you don't even know.

Ordinarily I don't make eye contact on the street, but I have found it useful every once in a while. Primarily with raving, wildly gesticulating, smelly people.

I was coming in to work one morning and saw an odd gesticulating man (known from here on out as the OGM) coming from about 2 blocks away. He was yelling and waving his arms and kind of menacing people and yelling about being invisible. I didn't want to cross the street and 1. seem like a total coward and 2. draw his attention to me, so I just kept walking toward him hoping that someone else would diffuse the situation.

So, the guy in front of me passed the OGM and studiously ignored his antics. OGM went ballistic. I thought, "Fantastic" and moved my giant bag to form a shield (like yeah, right) in case he rushed me and I switched my umbrella into my hitting hand.

I'm about 5'4" and this guy was easily 6' and as I walked up to pass him he kind of feinted in my direction. I had no idea what to do, so I swiveled toward him, looked him straight in the eye and said "HI!" in the most chipper voice I could muster. And kept right on walking.

I didn't turn back to look but all I heard behind me was "well... WHAT TIME IS IT?! !!?" and then a bunch of other commuters scrambling to give him the time. So yay for me! People behind me were hoping someone in front of them would diffuse the situation and I totally did

I've actually used this tactic several times since then and never been disappointed. It's pretty interesting. Apparently a little validation goes a long way.

It's even harder when walking with people older than me (ie, my mum), because people seem to always say hello to older people, even if they don't know them at all, and so I feel I have to force myself to look at people coming by then, because it makes me feel invisible when other people I'm with get spoken to and I get ignored, so if I try to make eye contact and smile too, they then make eye contact with both/all of us and say hello, then I feel more included in the (unnecessary) greeting. It just seems to get to me when I get ignored. I have enough of that elsewhere. But once I was walking with my mum, and a man was in and out of the back of his van as we were coming by, and I knew he was going to look at my mum and speak (even though they don't know eachother) so I found myself peering at him in the hope that we both will be greeted, but this time my mum wasn't looking at him and he wasn't looking at us, so afterwards I felt rather bad for staring at him, because he might have felt me staring in the corner of his eye and I was worried that I might have made him feel intimidated, because I definately know how that feels.

What a dilemma, over something so silly! But remember, I'm an Aspie, we do worry over tiny things!

I look at strangers very briefly and just move on really.

Eye contact with people on the street is really painful but I always feel obliged to, because I don't want people to think I'm being racist or anything. I usually give them continual glances until they're about 4 metres away then look away as we pass.

I feel obliged too. I have paranoia and social anxiety and have irrational thoughts that makes me think everybody's notifying what I'm doing and I can't seem to tell myself it's not true since I can always feel like I'm in the spotlight because I've learnt (on places like WP) that NTs are good at noticing body language and so I think that I give off the most obvious body language in the world what is so attention-drawing that people just can't leave me alone.
So that is a big factor that makes me anxious of how to look at people. But often when I'm sitting on the bus and other people are getting on, I never know what to do with my eyes (other than close them, what I don't always want to do, especially on sunny days). Although there is usually lots of other people sitting on the bus so there is no reason why I should be the only one that gets noticed first (being so I sit in the middle, not too far at the front and not too far at the back), I still always feel like I am the one noticed and I feel that if I do look at the person going to their seat they might think ''huh what's she looking at?!'' and stare at me back (or I might get upset if I catch them staring at me), but if I don't look at them they might think, ''oh why ain't she looking at me? Don't most people look up at someone when they're getting on the bus? She must be one nervous weirdo!''

Ohh, just wish I could get out of this circle of anxiety and return to how I used to be!! !! !! !! ! I know I have gotten myself obsessed with this sort of thing but I'm scared to harp on about it too much to counsellors because they will most probably get bored, since it's such a small thing to be obsessing over, but not for an Aspie with social phobia.