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My town still has a law that says you can't walk backwards after dark on a sidewalk | Dumb Laws We Found - Free To Speak

martin.riley•2mo ago

My town still has a law that says you can't walk backwards after dark on a sidewalk

I got pulled over in Cassville last week for walking home from a friend's house and the cop said I was 'retrograde ambulating' after 8 PM. Apparently it's a real code from 1923, has anyone else run into weird time-specific walking laws?

3 comments

3 Comments

wyatt1352mo ago

Man that is wild! I got stopped in Millersburg last year for 'suspicious motion patterns' cause I was walking along the highway shoulder around 11 PM. Cop said there's an old ordinance from 1929 about pedestrians moving in a way that 'disturbs the natural flow of traffic' after dark... I couldn't believe it was still on the books. Makes you wonder how many of these weird old laws are just sitting there waiting to catch someone off guard. I bet your 'retrograde ambulating' thing is just like our old mill town laws, nobody even remembers they exist until some bored cop digs em up.

blakestone2mo ago

And the crazy part is, those old laws probably have some wild backstory too. Like, I looked up "suspicious motion patterns" after you mentioned it, and apparently it was meant to stop bootleggers zigzagging across fields at night during prohibition. They just never took it off the books lol. Makes you wonder what else is hiding in those town record vaults, just waiting for someone to walk the wrong way after midnight.

carter.joseph2mo ago

Funny you mention the bootleggers, @blakestone. My grandpa used to tell me stories about old laws like that from his hometown. They had one about "unlawful gathering after dusk" which sounds innocent until you realize it was specifically made to break up barn dances that were actually cover for poker games and homemade liquor. The town clerk kept a whole binder of these old ordinances in a filing cabinet. Nobody touched it for decades. Then a new mayor found it and tried to enforce some of them for fun. Biggest mess you ever saw. People getting tickets for trimming trees on Sundays and stuff.