I noticed walking down the hall that as I was about to pass someone walking the other direction that we both made dramatic efforts to get to our respective RIGHT sides when it would have been simpler to stay on the left. The more I thought about it the more I realized how common this is in America. We tend to make an effort to go in the right side of a double door, walk down the right side of the mall, overtake slower walkers on the LEFT, you get the point.
I just wonder if this comes from driving on the right side of the road. For those of you that drive on the LEFT in your respective countries, is this reversed?
I think I tend to pass people to their left… but I’m not so sure. Of course, when I’m walking in Umeda (in Osaka) I just try to go through the human mass.
What I found fabulously entertaining, though, was the signs in elementary school stairways that asked kids to stay to the right - although people drive left here. Well, okay, it wasn’t fabulously entertaining, just barely worth noticing, but anyway…
oncoming pedestrian traffic - I veer to the left to let them pass
opening doors: I tend to use the one on the right handed side, as I’mn right handed and therefor would use my right hand to open the door on the right handed side.
shopping malls: I tend to take a left as soon as I’m in
Overtaking slower walkers: that depends, really: where there’s space to do so. I don’t often walk around town, as it’s usually too busy for my taste. I kind of speed walk compared with the rest of them, so I usually nearly go through them
but yes, I seem to be doing things more left sidedly than right sidedly
Yes, in my observation your supposition is correct - we tend on the whole to walk on the same side as we drive. Indeed, when I’ve been in the US I’ve occasionally crashed into people in the street because we’ve both tried to pass on the same side.
When I entered junior high (7th grade in my district), we were actually instructed to maintain a “drive on the right” traffic pattern in the crowded hallways between periods.
Now, teenagers aren’t always the best at following directions, but the desired traffic pattern did in fact emerge. For the most part.
I drive on the left, and I definitely walk on the left side of hallways and sidewalks. And on “bike paths” (actually multi-use trails) around here, all cyclists, pedestrians and joggers seem to keep to the left. Now, if only their dogs did the same…
I’ve caused a few pedestrian crashes and made one poor guy ride his bike into a bush because my American programming kept making me move to my right as we approached, while they kept trying to to move to their left. We’d both keep walking farther and farther to the same side until either one of us snapped out of it and moved the other way, or we both fell off the sidewalk.
Usually we fell off the sidewalk. That programming’s hard to override.
Bizarrely, it’s the other way round. Pedestrians used to prefer to pass each other on the left, to keep their sword arm on the side of any approaching danger. Then wagons adopted the policy, then cars.
the knights would be right handed, and thus hold their lance (or whatever their weapon was called) in their right hand, passing eachother on the left hand side of the “panel” in the middle.
Cecil’s explanation i found a bit strange, as not a lot of people in the middle ages had access to weapons. The only thing the Hoi Polloi would carry around, was a spoon. And most times, that’d be a wooden one.
In Thailand, they drive on the left, but things like pedestrian overpasses in Bangkok are marked (with little painted footprints) for walking on the right. On the sidewalks, it seems that confusion reigns.
On a related note, I almost got killed in the Cairo subway. In Egypt, they drive on the right (well, out in the boondocks, they’re inclined to drive in the middle!), but the trains and subway system are left-running, probably reflecting the influence of the British, who built the earliest railways in the country. So, on a subway platform, when you lean over the tracks to look for the approaching train, you end up looking the wrong way.
In england we drive on the left, and I was taught to walk on the left of a pavement so the person on the outside and see oncoming traffic. However, when walking on the road, keep to the right for the same reason.
But I generally go to the side the other person isn’t.
