Characterize the pedestrian. What do we get to know about him and his feelings?

Leonard Mead—the eponymous "pedestrian"—is a writer, a book-loving intellectual, which makes him an eccentric figure in this TV-obsessed dystopia. What makes him even more eccentric—not to mention dangerous—in the eyes of the authorities is his love of long walks. In this society, there's just no purpose to this activity. Walking along the empty highways and byways is an absolute pleasure for Leonard. Everyone else is at home watching TV, so the streets are completely silent and deserted. All alone in the world, Leonard is in his element.
Leonard has a self-deprecating sense of humor. We see this when he's confronted by the robot police car and it starts asking him all kinds of personal questions, such as if he's married, to which Leonard responds,




Nobody wanted me.







But it's said with a smile, so we can reasonably surmise that Leonard doesn't take himself too seriously. At the same time, Leonard has a sense of his own importance as a human being, which further sets him apart from the rest of society. As a proud non-conformist, he's unwilling to bend to society and all its petty rules and regulations. He shows his defiance when he protests against the stern robotic voice of the police car ordering him to get in. Sadly, his protests are all to no avail, and the staunchly individualistic Leonard is whisked away to a psychiatric research institute.