Legend has it that when William Faulkner was in town writing the film adaptation of "To Have and Have Not," he took a stroll through Beverly Hills one night and was stopped by suspicious police.

Their question: Why was he not driving?

More than half a century later, Southern Californians are still not entirely sure what to make of pedestrians. Fewer than 1% of Los Angeles residents commute to work on foot. The reasons range from a development pattern that scorns walking to the fact that many people just plain don't know how to walk in public properly.

A recent national survey by the American Automobile Assn. revealed that 25% to 50% of Americans don't know when it's legal to jog in the street, or how to use a signal-controlled crosswalk properly or even whether drivers need to stop for pedestrians about to cross.

For the record, it's legal to continue across a crosswalk even after the "Don't Walk" sign begins flashing, despite what 49% of survey respondents thought. But it's illegal to jog in the street if adequate sidewalks are provided. If there are no sidewalks, walk on the shoulder facing oncoming traffic. And drivers are not required to stop at a crosswalk unless a pedestrian has already begun to cross.

(There are no laws against chewing gum and walking at the same time, but novices might want to take it one step at a time.)

*

All this confusion has a price. A pedestrian is killed by a vehicle every 93 minutes in the United States, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Murder, by comparison, occurs every 23 minutes, according to the FBI.

Unlike murder victims though, most pedestrian fatalities could easily be prevented simply by following the rules, said Arthur Anderson, director of the California Office of Traffic Safety.

"Most of us know the rules, but we refuse to adhere to them," said Anderson, a former California Highway Patrol officer. "It's a behavioral problem. These are some of the easiest traffic safety laws to comply with, but people still do things to get themselves injured."

And it's usually their own fault. More than 80% of the 850 pedestrians who died last year in California were doing things they should not have been doing--from trying to run across busy interstate highways to wandering drunk in the roadway or crossing the street in the middle of the block.