After spending hours reading books and papers about coordination theory it's funny to run across this concept in the always relevant urban dictionnary:

pedestrian face-off: an awkward situation in which two pedestrians, who are on a collision course with each other, are repeatedly unsuccessful in averting one another. As one person moves to their right, the other person moves to their left and vice versa. Each time they attempt a new maneuver, the frustrated...

Why do I blog this? mmh I was thinking about Herbert Clark's theory of coordination. Clark explains that one of the most powerful way of coordinating is conventions: a community-accepted solution for reccurent coordination problems (like stopping at the traffic light when it's red...). But in some cases, there is no emergent usage for the situation described above...