To walk in Abu Dhabi is to risk your life. And not just because it is dangerously hot half the year. And not just because sidewalks are often broken and uneven, inviting sprained ankles. Or worse.

This is not a city built for pedestrians, and even when extra exertions have been made to get pedestrians over (or under) major streets, walkers here often prefer to dodge through eight lanes (or more) of traffic.

The government has noticed, as has The National. Both entities are a little exasperated, but to be a walker here is to understand the perverse decision-making that leads pedestrians to dash across a street — or weave through cars stopped at a red light.

The latest: Local authorities are putting up more bridges over big streets. Not that much of anyone is using them.

As you can see in this story, one of our reporters found people who concede they still run across a major road rather than use the pedestrian overpass recently constructed over Airport Road near the new Mushrif Mall.

Basically, it’s about time and distance.

If you survive the dash across the road … you save on both.

Unlike Dubai, where the winding roads seem as if they might have been plotted by someone under the influence of LSD, Abu Dhabi is a gridded city. At intersections, streets are at right angles. It has rational progressions of street numbers, too.

A good start, then.

Where Abu Dhabi comes off the rails is the extraordinary length of its city blocks. In the most densely populated areas of the city — those nearest the northwest end of the island — blocks can be a half-mile long and not much less in width.

If you don’t feel like braving the heat — or spending the time — to walk to the traffic lights at the nearest intersection, which could be 200 yards away or more, what you do is venture out into the street, cross three or four or even five lanes, get over the center divider (which sometimes is fenced), and then cross another three, four or five lanes.

If it sounds dangerous, it is.

Two ways to do this.

1. A mad dash. I saw someone do this the other day. He got out of a cab on the north-bound side of Airport Road, and he sprinted across four lanes of traffic during a brief break in flow. And he made it.

2. Weave through stopped cars. This is far more common method. Stopped cars, even across four lanes, is common in the more densely built parts of town, at rush hours. The person on foot then winds his way through the cars waiting for a green light. At certain intersections, dozens of pedestrians wait for cars to back up at a red, then take off on a zigzag route through the waiting motorists.

If a guy (and it’s nearly always a man) is paying attention, this is not a profoundly dangerous practice. That is, as long as a driver doesn’t suddenly decide to move up four or five feet — and perhaps squish you between his hood and the next car’s rear bumper. Or just not pay attention and have the car’s idling engine carry the car forward — and squish you.

The city apparently plans to build more overpasses in an attempt to get pedestrians out of traffic lanes.

I’m not sure this is going to help. They would need to build enough overpasses that no pedestrian would need to walk more than 50 yards to reach one … they would need to convince people that climbing stairs in brutal heat is a good idea, and that the stairs are not dangerous … or they would need to build more tunnels, yet make sure they don’t seem creepy or become dirty.

Again, it’s not as bad as Dubai, where the idea of walking is pretty much extinct. (And if you do walk, and try to cross that city’s freeway-like roads, trouble is waiting for you.)

It will be interesting to see how this works out.

Walking is seen as a lower-class activity, unpleasant under any conditions, and getting pedestrians out of traffic lanes will be a test. So far, Abu Dhabi isn’t passing.