In Bradbury's short story "The Pedestrian," Mr. Leonard Mead is arrested by a robotic police car for simply walking in the streets at night and behaving like a pedestrian. In the year 2053 AD, nearly every citizen remains indoors and watches their televisions each night. Mr. Mead is one of the few people who enjoys walking outside to enjoy the natural air. Despite the fact that the city streets are completely barren because people refuse to leave their homes or look away from their television screens, Mr. Mead enjoys his nightly walk through the empty streets. Unfortunately, a completely automated police car stops Leonard during his nightly walk and questions him before demanding that he get into the back of the police car. In Bradbury's dystopian future society, being a pedestrian is suspicious, and this results in Mr. Mead's arrest. While Mr. Leonard Mead sits in the back of the police car, he learns that he is being taken to the Psychiatric Center for Research on Regressive Tendencies.

The “horrible” crime that Leonard Mead commits in “The Pedestrian” is that he is alone and walking down the street. When the one robot police car left in the city of three million stops Mr. Mead, they start questioning him about this unusual habit. The police car finds out that Mr. Mead use to be a writer, but since the society doesn’t read anymore, he is unemployed. They also ask him if he is married, as if that would explain why he needed to take long walks, and he says, “no.” Finally, they discover that Mead walks every night and doesn’t even own a “viewing screen.”  All of this suspicious behavior adds up to Mr. Mead needing to be taken to the Psychiatric Center for Research on Regressive Tendencies for a mental “adjustment” that will make him “normal” in society.