You ever walk down an empty aisle in a grocery store and found yourself engulfed in the essence of a massive lingering fart by someone who has since moved to a different aisle?
Do you think it would smell less if you were walking in the other direction?
The average respiratory rate in a healthy adult is between 12 and 18 breaths per minute. Hopefully the person you’re following in the store isn’t farting that much.
Unless the person were a emitting a long, continuous fart, your analogy breaks down.
It would be more akin to walking behind someone smoking a cigarette or wearing half a bottle of perfume.
In that case, yes, you would get out of the *fragrance* range quicker if you walked past them in the other direction than following behind them.
So are you defending the following the arrows, herd mentality?