I’m curious, here in the US, where we drive in the right lane, we also tend to walk on the right side of a hall or sidewalk. If you are in a country where you drive in the left lane, do you also tend to walk on the left side?
Not British, but from a “drive on the left” country. And yes, I walk on the left too.
All is confusion! In the US walking is well organized- everyone veers right. In the UK it is different- you never know.
A confusing factor is that often escalators and revolving doors are ‘keep right’ which affects the flow both locally and also at a distance.
Japan is also a drive-on-the-left area and…mostly random.
I think that for right-handers walking on the right is more natural so in drive-on-left countries they all get confused (and as they’re the majority…)
I walk on the left in Japan though.
We walk on the left in Oz. Now, if we could just get people to keep to the left on escalators …
Look at the moving sidewalks.
When i was visiting Singapore (a left-driving country) a couple of the moving sidewalks were ‘on the left’. It through me for a loop when i walked onto the wrong one.
Most people at work tend to dodge to the right when they almost bump into someone, but then I work in a school where the kids don’t drive.
Down streets it’s pretty much a free for all as far as I can tell.
Hoo, boy, did I get yelled at in London. I was walking up a staircase coming out of a tube station. I was on the right. A very angry Londoner said, curtly, “Here, we walk on the right.” When in Rome…but he was still a poopy face.
So he was yelling at you for walking on the right instead of on the right? :dubious:
In my experience the signs all over the tube and its associated passages say “Keep Left”. One caveat being that on escalators you stand on the right or walk on the left if you are in a hurry. Standing on the left side of the escalator will cause a queue of annoyed hurrying people to form behind you.
Technically ‘stand on the right’ means ‘walk on the left’ - the consistency with driving on the left is preserved.
I have observed no such general formality in ordinary pedestrian areas though; people just seem to walk - often in something resembling streams, but not in any especially pre-ordained order.
We were at Disney recently and were at first surprised by the number of people that we kept bumping into because they were all trying to walk on the left against the main flow of pedestrian traffic. It happened again and again and they showed no inclination to veer to their right. We quickly surmised, and I think accurately so, that these were foreigh visitors from countries where “to the left” was the norm.
In situations where a mixing of the norms is going to be frequent and continuous, perhaps marking the pathways would prevent any confusion and potential accidents.
Proof that traveling on the right is the natural way of doing things. :rolleyes:
I run into that frequently in Calgary, too (especially on multi-use paths were it is actually marked “Keep Right”). Most of the perpetrators of walking on the left (i.e. against the flow of traffic) are Asian, which has led me to surmise that a lot of Asian countries are drive on the left countries. Still, how many times do you have to walk around person after person walking towards you to figure out that maybe YOU’RE the one on the wrong side?
We don’t like to stick to one thing here. We drive on the left, walk wherever we fancy and sail our boats on the right. It’s more interesting that way. 
Not natural, but conditioned. When you are very young and teachers led you to gym or the cafe, they remind you to walk on the right side of the hall. Most people have been taught to walk on the right well before they’re ever allowed behind the wheel of a car.