Watch Where You're Walking

One of my dad's chief complaints about my mom was that she didn't watch where she was walking.

In some environments it's vital to look feet or inches in front of you. In others, not so much.

In "built" environments we can put it partially on auto-pilot. We can assume that stairs have uniform geometry and hallways are smooth and level.

In the "wild," we can make fewer assumptions and need to look more closely about what's right in front of us. There might be a tree root. The log over the stream might be rotted.

These concepts are recognized in the comments to the Washington Pattern Jury Instructions:

"For instance when there is no reason to anticipate a hazard, ordinary care does not require one who is walking in a place provided for the purpose to keep his or her eyes riveted to the floor immediately in front of his or her feet."

That would have made my mom happy. My dad less so.

And when it comes to environments, there's more to it than just "built" and "wild." There's also "retail."

Billions of dollar are spent to ensure our attention in retail environments is directed anywhere and everywhere except to the floor immediately in front of our feet.

In grocery stores high margin items are displayed at eye level or just below and put the lowest margin items on the bottom shelves.

Grocery and other stores are fully on board with with customers looking at goods displayed at eye level but try to re-write the rules when someone trips or slips and fall. Then they want to say that the banana peel was right there on the ground and--with its vivid yellow color--should have been seen and avoided.