alt Hacker NewsI'm in downtown Toronto, and there are plenty of (very quiet) electric cars, all sorts of quiet e-bikes and other electric personal transportation devices (scooters, e-unicycles) and other things (roller blades, bikes, skateboards) where often the only sound is the noise of the wheels on the sidewalk / pavement making a quiet hiss / rumble. I do a lot of walking, and headphone people are often (but not always) quite clueless about these things approaching. Granted, those other people aren't supposed to be where people are walking, but they regularly are, sadly.
Passing isn't something that is only the responsibility of the passer, that of course is absurd. Most people don't walk on the very edge of a path, but slightly off from the center (or in the shade close to the buildings if hot, or far from the street if puddles and raining, and etc), and you may also be carrying things that make you take up a lot of space.
So, in practice, as a walker, you do in fact have to be aware of people approaching from behind, at least, if you aren't an ass, because it is often kind (or even necessary) to move aside a bit to make passing easier / possible. Earphone people are some of the biggest assholes in these scenarios.
EDIT: But I fully agree that once you get out of the chaos of the downtown core, or likely plenty of other cities, this is probably just not really a meaningful problem / tradeoff.
> Passing isn't something that is only the responsibility of the passer, that of course is absurd. Most people don't walk on the very edge of a path,
Interesting difference between Canadians and Spanish people then, very interesting. Here it's expected you don't walk in the middle if you can, at least in metropolitan areas where people have very different walking speed. If you have to say something in order to pass the person, then the other person is already doing something wrong. Most people I see with headphones are indeed almost always walking very much on the sides, exactly so they are not in the way and don't need to be bothered.
> personal transportation devices (scooters, e-unicycles) and other things (roller blades, bikes, skateboards) where often the only sound is the noise of the wheels on the sidewalk / pavement making a quiet hiss / rumble
I guess this is a more practical difference, here all vehicles (including scooters, bicycles, and everything that doesn't have two meat legs) have dedicated streets/lanes, or use normal roads where cars go. None of those vehicles go at the same street/pavement where pedestrians go, so I don't think headphone-wearing pedestrians have to worry about the same thing as the Toronto people seemingly have to watch out for. You could walk blindfolded more or less in central Barcelona, and not get close to being hit by any bicycles or scooters. In fact, there are tons of blind people seemingly navigating the city just well :)
Hope you get more modern car-alternative infrastructure in the soon future! It helps a lot to separate a whole host of traffic you don't want with pedestrians, and is easily worth the investment.