In the US we usually walk on the right side of a sidewalk because that is where we drive. Do people in England walk on the left side of the sidewalk or stairwell?
ie, we drive on the right side of the road, we don’t drive on the sidewalk.
This question has cropped up a few times before…you can figure out what terms will come up with a successful search 
But in short…no, we don’t walk on either side, we negotiate around each other quite happily. How crowds behave in such situations is a cultural thing, and there’s certainly some places where people will routinely walk on one side or the other, and there’s no direct connection to driving habits.
Here’s me answering another of your questions immediately. Yes, we generally do. It’s not a hard-and-fast rule, and sometimes end up in a droitwich, but generally you pass people to the left when you meet them coming the opposite way. And on escalators you are generally expected to stand on the right, allowing people to walk past you on the left.
Sorry, jjimm, but I don’t agree at all. If there was a general tendency to pass on one particular side, droitwiches would hardly ever occur.
I challenge you to pass everyone to the right tomorrow, and see how many more droitwiches you incur!
The last time I was at Heathrow, it certainly seemed as if the rule for walking was “Keep left”.
Generally, wherever there are walking instructions in the UK, for example at Underground stations in London, they will say Keep Left. That is not to say that people will always obey these signs.
I mentioned in an earlier thread on exactly the same subject the only place I know where there is a sign saying Keep Right: this is as you go from the main ticket hall to the District & Circle line platforms at Victoria Underground station. The reason for this is that there is an access to these platforms on the right-hand side and it would be impractical for the usual arrangement to apply.
We stand on the right on escalators on the Underground, too, allowing people to walk up or down on the left. There are signs for that, too, which are also written in German and French.
I’ve never ever seen any general observance of ‘keep left’ signs on the tube, despite the religious adherence to ‘keep right’ on escalators. There’s one that amuses me, I think it’s going down to the Central Line at Liverpool St, where the sign clearly predates the creation of a one-way system, and you’re basically being told to keep the right side of the tunnel completely empty :S
When I lived in New Zealand, where they also drive on the left, there was a very pronounced tendency to walk on the left. Being accustomed to walk on the right, I often found myself bucking traffic on the sidewalks.
I also would challenge Gorillaman to deliberately walk on the right in the UK where there is heavy sidewalk traffic and see what happens.
Colibri - that’s nothing more than circumstatial.
I do walk on the left, but only as much as I do on the right. To doggedly always walk on the right would cause problems, because it’s not what is normal in Britain. I counter the challenges, and ask jjimm to spend tomorrow passing everybody on the left, and count the droitwiches.
I largely already do pass to the left, and I have a low droitwich rating. However, I’ll do it tomorrow and be more observant, then report back.
No, it’s not circumstantial - it was my consistent observation, and I paid attention to it.
However, in Googling on this, I found this that tends to support what you say in that the UK is rather odd in not having a preference. Other countries generally do, and this correlates what side of the road you drive on. The page indicates that Australia and NZ have a weak tendency to walk on the left.
In Panama, although they drive on the right, pedestrian traffic is pretty random. On the other hand, road traffic is fairly random too, and Panamanians love to drive on the wrong side of the road whenever possible, especially on winding mountain roads.
Circumstantial on a national level. You found one country which drives on the left, and also has a collective tendency to pass on the left.
That cite confirms my suspicion that the only way to prove a correlation is by cherrypicking examples. It’s hardly a comprehensive survey, is it?
What is the Ministry of Silly Walks’ current position on this issue?
Hunched over, with index fingers extended.
No, more than that. The tendency to walk right is strong in the US, based on my personal observation. I noticed a definite “'walk left” tendency in NZ, where I lived for 3 years. I have also visited France, Australia, and Canada, and to the best of my recollection they fit too. In Panama, although pedestrians on downtown streets are pretty disorganized, on the seaside promenade, now that I think of it, people do walk right. I’ve visited lots of other countries too, but I haven’t spent enough time walking in high traffic urban areas to have formed a definite impression. Since I definitely tend to walk right, if Latin American countries have a tendency to walk left, I probably would have noticed it.
While not a scientific survey, the page offers information on 8 countries, in which 6 pedestrians show a tendency to walk on the same side as vehicles drive, and the other two show no preference. There is no indication this information was cherry picked; it was just those countries for which information was available.
On the other hand, you have offered nothing more than your own personal impression of the pattern (or lack of it) in one country. This impression is contradicted by jjimm. Why is what you say of any particular value on the subject?
Those wacky Brits walk on the pavement, though, which’ll get you run over if you try it here.
Sorry.
Confirmed, as one who walks through city crowds here in Sydney every day. As I’m a fast walker I often move right to overtake and have to dodge through oncoming traffic.
Seconded. Everything in that post applies to me too. You can walk on the right if you prefer (it’s hardly as though a cop will pull you over), and many people do. I do it sometimes* - but do it all the time, and you’ll get droitwiched to heck.
*Sometimes you have to. Often for me as a fast walker, I’ll end up on the extreme right by overtaking a very slow person, a slow person, and a slightly slow person, all overtaking the one before. Othertimes, somebody will be walking on their extreme right (my left), and although I could stand my ground (and sometimes do when I’m feeling annoyed with them), to avoid a droitwich, I’ll move to my right around them. But then there’s a person two or three feet behind them, walking towards me up the centre, so I have to go even further right. Sometimes, I’ll get faced with an oncoming diagonal phalanx of pedestrians tailing off to the right, and they’ll funnel me right over to the far right. Next thing, there’s a crowd, and I can’t get back to the left easily, and then I become the one people think is being a contrary bastard. It’s a bit like when you have to park badly in relation to a carpark’s painted lines because the adjacent two cars have parked badly. Return hours later, those guys have gone, and people are tut-tutting your parking.