How do you avoid being electrocuted on the streets of New York? You consult this map of stray-voltage electrified objects as detected by Con Ed (after the fact, of course), and you heed this walkabout advice:

[Public safety watchdog Roger] Lane had this warning for New Yorkers: “As a pedestrian, you cannot avoid energized objects; they’re there.” His best advice to New Yorkers, he added, is to “never touch a street light, never touch a traffic light, don’t walk in the puddles on the sidewalk and you should absolutely never walk barefoot.”

In other words, never leave your apartment.

Such is life in the city electric. I suppose that, even considering the Big Apple’s creaking infrastructure, this haywire threat is no worse here than in any other city or suburb; the x-factor is population density. Just tread carefully, and in rubber soles (which, being the daredevil I am, I rarely wear).