This is one of the few sales I ever made of a humorous piece - and very pleased I was at the time. Until, that is, the magazine that 'bought' it went bust before they could pay me! Ah well at least the Web makes vanity publishing cheap...

You only have to step outside your door to know that it’s true: people are getting ruder. The psychologists will tell us it’s all to do with a lack of good parenting during our formative years. Xenophobes insist that it’s all down to bad habits picked up abroad now that the British are so well-travelled. Sociologists could point to the decline in social controls due to the ever-increasing fragmentation of society and the alienation of the individual. Malthusian doomwatchers might even try to convince you that it’s an inevitable consequence of the overcrowding and loss of personal space brought on by spiraling population growth. Take your pick. The fact remains and it’s time that someone stopped the rot.

Of course, what consenting adults do to each other in their own homes is up to them. It’s when they’re out in public that they need to be controlled. Having said that, I’ve given up hoping that the behaviour of motorists can ever be improved. I think that most motorists just simply want to kill people and that’s all there is to it. And, while we continue to think of killing people with cars as "accidents" rather than the inevitable consequence of doing something inherently and recklessly dangerous, I suppose they’ll continue to get away with it. Instead, I’d like to try to get some order into the way people on foot use our streets. That’s why I’m proposing a code of conduct for pedestrians: The Pathway Code.

The idea is simple. Using a pavement as a pedestrian may not be as lethal as using a road as a driver but it is damned irritating to be barged into, to have your way blocked and to be trodden on every time you step into the street. People just don’t seem able to control themselves or to show the kind of civility and consideration required on our busy streets. I generously assume that it’s because they are all stupid and ignorant rather than that they are deliberately malicious, so I therefore propose a set of simple rules, that even the thickest could follow, to ensure that walking through a city street becomes more like walking in the country and less like trying to make a fifty-yard run against a psychopathic rugby team.

First we’ll tackle something simple: walking in a straight line down a straight pavement. Sadly, most pedestrians cannot manage even this. So this is how you do it:

It would probably be a good idea to mark out lanes on pavements to guide the feeble-minded and make walking in a straight line easier for them. Anyway. Having mastered this, we can go on to the other basic skills: like turning a corner. The universal rule is this:

This is a deceptively simple technique but sadly lacking from most pedestrians’ repertoires. Surprisingly, it isn’t adequate on its own to prevent collisions. What is needed is an additional rule:

I’m sure you’ve seen it. You’re walking along the pavement and the person in front of you decides to turn. They glance over their shoulder and see you and they can tell at once that if they turn, you’re going to fall over them. Then a look of bovine idiocy suddenly blanks over their features as their feeble brains give up the attempt to cope with this simple problem and they turn right into you.

Finally, in this section on basic rules, we must consider the one that almost everybody gets wrong: standing still. This causes endless problems and I’ve seen appaling examples of sloppy standing still as far apart as London and Dundee. Again, the rules are straightforward.

Stepping out of a shop seems to have a completely paralysing effect on many of our more intellectually challenged pedestrians. They take one step into the busy thoroughfare and then seem to be hit by instant brain death as they stand, gazing blankly about them. This has the threefold effect of causing pedestrians on the pavement to have to swerve around them, forming a small crowd of people on the pavement who are trying to get past them into the shop, and creating a blockage inside the shop of people trying to get out.

My own view is that walking about without a license should be a criminal offence—but nobody listens. Once you’ve mastered the basic techniques, you should be able to walk in a straight line, turn a corner and stand still. For most people, this is enough. For some it is too much (these people should avoid standing still in public unless they have a competent friend to help them). However, for the few who find themselves unsatisfied with this, here are the rules for the more advanced pedestrian skills.

First: walking backwards. You might ask, as I often do, why on Earth anyone should want to do this. Yet there it is. The length and breadth of our nation, people are causing mayhem by suddenly reversing direction or, more frequently, starting out backwards from having stood still (hole-in-the-wall cash dispensers are death-traps as almost everybody leaves them walking backwards). I can only think of two reasons why people do this. One is that they have to concentrate so hard on standing still, or walking in a straight line, that they grow confused and forget which way is forward. The other possibility is that people suffer frequent, brief delusions that they have inexplicably found themselves in the presence of the Queen (perhaps the delusion is triggered by shocks—like finding a working cash machine). Anyway, if you want to walk backwards, here’s how it’s done.

Walking with other people can be a real challenge. People who walk in pairs are bad enough. Two people side-by-side is enough to block most pavements. Many people, however, following some atavistic herding instinct, like to wander the streets in gaggles of four or five, or even more. This kind of thing presents a real problem for the legislators because, while behaving in such a mindless way is clearly anti-social, it might seem over-rigid to compel families and groups of friends to walk in neat, single-file crocodiles like schoolchildren (used to walk) on an outing. The best that seems achievable is a Code of Conduct but, herd animals, beware, if this fails to have results, I shall be lobbying for legislation.

Finally, there is the evasive maneouver. This is perhaps the most difficult of all the pedestrian’s skills and yet one which is so frequently necessary. You need it almost every time you pass a cash dispenser as someone is bound to walk backwards into you. Then you have to execute either the Emergency Stop or the Little Sideways Dance both of which will invariably land you in more trouble as a little old lady carreens into your back or you find a 20 stone salesman in the spot you needed to dance sideways into. Only the following advice can be offered.

Well, there it is. I can do no more for you. Learn the rules. Practice the techniques and let’s all be a little safer on the pavements this year. Mind how you go.