Not to offend anyone from another country, but having no walking convention is sheer lunacy and having a walking convention that is anything other than “bear right” is complete idiocy. Let me explain…
We, here in America, drive on the right, we place our “in” doors to the right, we stay to the right on staircases and esclators, and we walk to the right on sidewalks. We do everything right. Countries that depart from that convention are doing it wrong.
Why do we need a walking convention? Well, you may not need one in England, where you have only 53-million people. But, here in America, we have 311-million people and our sidewalks sometimes get crowded. Plus, we walk fast, particularly in the Northeast and Gary, Indiana. Lot’s of fast-walking pedestrians on a sidewalk without a proper walking convention spells anarchy and chaos (figuratively speaking).
Why is walking on the right, right? There are a number of valid reasons:
To start, it makes perfect sense to stay to the right on staircases, so that we right-handers keep our dominant hand on the railing. We outnumber and are better people than left-handers, so that’s just the way it’s meant to be. If a left-hander ever tries to go up the stairs using my right-sided railing as I go down…well, he’d better have good health insurance, or be a well-developed woman, or both, that’s for sure.
So, we have an established walking convention on staircases—why should that change when we, say, decent a building’s staircase onto a sidewalk? Bear right on staircases/bear right on sidewalks—that has an elegant symmetry to it; anything else is inelegantly asymmetrical.
Now, let’s say I see a store ahead that I want to enter, so I start hugging close to the building as I approach. If I’m bearing left on the sidewalk, like some kind of chaotic anarchist, then I’ll be knocked cold by the swinging door of an exiting store patron using the properly placed “out” door on the left, before I safely reach the “in” door on the right. And don’t use the tired retort, “what if you’re approaching the store from the outer lane of the side-walk?” Obviously you stop perpendicular to the “in” door, wait for a break in pedestrian traffic, then dash for the door head on. Or, better still, do as I do, always bear right and never walk on the street side lane of any sidewalk. I get more exercise that way.
And, as has been mentioned up-thread, bearing right on the sidewalk keeps one facing traffic on the outer sidewalk lane. This is important in case a wobbly wheel from one’s roller skate causes one to hurl into the path of an oncoming vehicle. One wants to be able to see the driver before impact so one can sue him for being distracted by his cell phone, street hooker, or whatnot (I can’t tell you how many times this has happened to me).
Then, of course, there’s the case of sidewalk trees and their roosting birds always being in the outer sidewalk lane. Coincidence? I think not.
In conclusion: it makes sense for there to be a walking convention and that convention must be, “bear right.”
The problem with our friends across the pond (i.e. the Atlantic Ocean) is that they have a mental conflict of interest with regard to which walking convention to adhere to, so, being British and all that that entails, they adhere to none. On the one hand, I assume they, like the rest of us, have more right-handers than left-handers, meaning they must use right-sided railings and place their “in” doors to the right. On the contra-lateral hand, they mysteriously and arrogantly drive on the left side of the street (this is the other reason we declared independence from them, btw). And, with all the roller skaters and pogo-stickers in England, it behooves them to always face traffic as they roll or bounce into the street, lest they risk an impact to which it is hard to place blame.
When England’s population soon swells to 311-million, they too will need a fail-safe sidewalk convention. So, the obvious solution to convert our British brethren into a population of proper sidewalk walkers is to remove their mental conflict of interest. This can be accomplished if they start driving on the right side of the road (i.e. street). This will be no easy chore and we can’t expect it to happen all at once. But we can get it started at the grass roots level by encouraging at least our British dopers to start driving that way, until it becomes ubiquitously fashionable…or messy.
Problem solved. You’re welcome.
