Do people walk to the left in other countries?

[amanset]

@Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus

Living in a right-side driving country, it seems to me that people in corridors, concourses, station platforms, and so on generally do walk on the right. The only major exception I can think of is walking on the left side of the road in the absence of sidewalks–the better for you and oncoming drivers to see each other. That we have such roads tends to shock some European visitors, but usually it’s understandable given the modest volume of traffic usually found on such roads.

They are pretty damn common in the UK once you leave a major settlement. Everyone knows you should walk facing oncoming traffic.

[_cc]

@TokyoPlayer

In Japan, people walk on the left side. It’s claimed that this custom was started because of how samurais would wear their swords. I have no idea if that is an urban legand or not, but people do walk on the left.

However, people in Tokyo and areas east stand on the left side of escalators and walk on the right, and this is reversed in Osaka and lands west.

While I agree with the escalator bit, I don’t believe the “people walk on the left side” holds true for Tokyo at all. Other expats and I have noted almost daily that the Japanese walk on any which side of the walk they damn well please, and rarely so much as glance up until you’ve nearly collided. Left, right, it doesn’t matter, no two people are consistent with each other, not to mention dashing right out of shops and narrow alleys without so much as even glancing at the traffic they’re about to burst into. Our passing theory is that because a relatively smaller percentage of people actually drive frequently in the city due to the mass transit, they don’t have the “always stay to one side” concept permanently drilled into them. Only the escalator thing sticks.

[SuperSmartAlex]

@robert_columbia

Did the water in the toilet spin the other way when it flushed?

It is a myth that water going down a drain spins opposite directions according to which hemisphere of the earth it is in. It is caused by many different factors, such as whether the water spout is aligned perfectly in the middle (usually it is tilted slightly to one side) and whether there was any movement in the water before it was drained and whether there are any objects in the water. Theoretically, if it were possible to pull the plug out of a drain without any disturbance to the water, there would not be any spin.

[Mangetout]

Escalators are the only places I’ve observed pedestrian passing conventions to exist in the UK (except for signposted flow systems such as separate entry/exit doors for shops and maybe pedestrian one-way systems in airports, etc).

Apart from that, it’s pretty much a free-for-all. On narrow pavements, it is (still fairly commonly observed) convention for a more vulnerable person to pass on the side furthest from the traffic - the chivalrous less vulnerable person passing on the side nearer the kerb (and if necessary, carefully stepping off the pavement into the road to pass).

[Mangetout]

@SuperSmartAlex

It is a myth that water going down a drain spins opposite directions according to which hemisphere of the earth it is in. It is caused by many different factors, such as whether the water spout is aligned perfectly in the middle (usually it is tilted slightly to one side) and whether there was any movement in the water before it was drained and whether there are any objects in the water. Theoretically, if it were possible to pull the plug out of a drain without any disturbance to the water, there would not be any spin.

In experiments where all of the confounding factors are controlled, it is possible for the spin to be determined by coriolis force. The force is tiny at this scale, but a system like this may be quite sensitive to intial conditions.

None of this really applies to normal bathrooms though, probably.

[hibernicus]

@'[cc

;14943270’]While I agree with the escalator bit, I don’t believe the “people walk on the left side” holds true for Tokyo at all. Other expats and I have noted almost daily that the Japanese walk on any which side of the walk they damn well please, and rarely so much as glance up until you’ve nearly collided. Left, right, it doesn’t matter, no two people are consistent with each other, not to mention dashing right out of shops and narrow alleys without so much as even glancing at the traffic they’re about to burst into. Our passing theory is that because a relatively smaller percentage of people actually drive frequently in the city due to the mass transit, they don’t have the “always stay to one side” concept permanently drilled into them. Only the escalator thing sticks.

I agree that Japanese people don’t follow any convention for walking on one side or the other (at least here in Osaka). For evidence, check out a wide railway station staircase, where the width is divided in two by a central railing. This is a perfect test case for the hypothesis that people prefer to stick to the left or the right. However, in reality the disembarking passengers all flood down (or up) the staircase using the full width without any sense that they should stick to one side or the other.

Even when cycling, which is done on the footpath and not on the road, people pass each other (and pedestrians) on one side or the other at random, without colliding.