# Do people walk on the left in England **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 26, 2006, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-walk-on-the-left-in-england/354344 "2006-04-26T19:15:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-walk-on-the-left-in-england/354344/21 "2006-04-27T06:19:39Z")
OK, so nobody else is bothering to find the earlier threads in which not everyone agrees on an answer 😉 … > **[Behaviors in Pedestrian Traffic Flow](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=267945)** > > While I was at the mall today, I wondered about something I’ve always noticed about the traffic flow. When walking through the mall, people tend to walk the same way they drive. That is, if walking north/south, the people walking north are on the... > **[For Dopers who drive on the LEFT side of the road](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=179484)** > > 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... ---
**Author:** ![TheLoadedDog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/35a633/32.png) [@TheLoadedDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheLoadedDog)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-walk-on-the-left-in-england/354344/22 "2006-04-27T06:38:15Z")
> [@GorillaMan](#): > > OK, so nobody else is bothering to find the earlier threads in which not everyone agrees on an answer 😉 … > > [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=267945](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=267945) > [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=179484](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=179484) I’ve just visited those two, and in the second thread, there’s a post by somebody called **GorillaMan** or something, in which quite a few previous threads were listed. So I’ve been to about four, and without counting the posts, it seems a clear majority of people seem to think people walk on the same side as they drive, with a significant minority disagreeing, and quite a few ‘not sures’. One person in one of those threads estimated about 60% of the time, people will keep to the ‘proper’ side. That would be about my rough estimate too. If I walk down the footpath of my quiet street, I can walk anywhere. Go to one of Sydney’s narrow inner city footpaths in lunch hour, and you’ll find just about everybody keeping left (or getting steamrollered by the oncoming people) ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 6:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-walk-on-the-left-in-england/354344/23 "2006-04-27T06:55:05Z")
OK, I’m really really puzzled, I can’t find my own post in either of those threads… A couple of observations: - If a person goes from America (where there seems to be a unanimous agreement of a tendency to walk to the right) to another unspecified country where people pass on either side freely, they may _perceive_ it as being dominated by ‘left-walkers’. Why? Because they won’t notice the numerous occassions where what they are familiar with will happen, and the occassions when the opposite occurs will be much more obvious, and result in more droitwiches. - Crowded streets have existed for far longer than mass car ownership. If ‘we walk to the left/right _because_ we drive on the left/right’ is correct, then how on earth did people cope in the nineteenth century?! ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-walk-on-the-left-in-england/354344/24 "2006-04-27T06:57:28Z")
Ahhh, it’s here that I made the massive search (I knew I’d managed to hit gold with a selection of search terms at some point in the past): [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=258073](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=258073) ---
**Author:** ![TheLoadedDog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/35a633/32.png) [@TheLoadedDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheLoadedDog)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 7:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-walk-on-the-left-in-england/354344/25 "2006-04-27T07:04:07Z")
I think another point, as I alluded to before, it depends where you’re observing it, even within the one city. Shoppers in my local suburban mall are bloody woeful pedestrians, and just wander everywhere like Brown’s cows, then again, the corridor is wide, there are plenty of side ‘streets’ (shop doorways) with their own cross-traffic affecting the flow, and the people are having a leisurely day shopping and aren’t in a hurry. On the other hand, watch the commuters pouring out of Town Hall Station and walking down George St in the morning, and keep left is rigidly enforced. Both in Sydney, but a visiting foreign observer would notice very different results depending on where in the city he went. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 7:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-walk-on-the-left-in-england/354344/26 "2006-04-27T07:11:28Z")
Oh, yet another observation 🙂 … If keeping to the left really is so ingrained in Britain, that surely means that my failure to notice it (even when I try to) means it’s doubly-ingrained in _me_. So why do I have no problem whatsoever in America? ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-walk-on-the-left-in-england/354344/27 "2006-04-27T17:49:27Z")
OK, anecdotal evidence: kept to the left all day. No droitwiches at all, except when a bloke and I nearly crashed into each other as I was coming out of the loo and he was going in, and a third guy came from the other direction at the same time. (Being English of course all three of us then stood there for more time than was normal, each trying to usher the other through the door first.) ---
**Author:** ![Iris\_Rings](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/d78d45/32.png) [@Iris\_Rings](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iris_Rings)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-walk-on-the-left-in-england/354344/28 "2006-04-27T19:00:16Z")
Have you ever noticed that in the US it is most common for supermarket doors to be opposite? That is, you go through the left door. No idea why. It annoys me every time I shop there. Other stores everyone goes through the righthand door. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-walk-on-the-left-in-england/354344/29 "2006-04-27T19:02:21Z")
What they do here is have a set of double doors, but _lock_ one of the friggin’ doors. All the time! Why, you idiots? (Sorry, this isn’t the pit, so just label that rant as “lame”.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-walk-on-the-left-in-england/354344.md?page=1)