Tuesday, November 1, 2022

SOL Tuesday: Veering to the Left?

 

Yesterday I was walking down the street. In New York City, sometimes the sidewalk is narrow, so if a person is walking toward you, you both have to veer sideways so as not to walk into each other. Usually, you both veer to the right, because that’s the default in this country.

            Yesterday the person coming toward me was a young Asian man. And he veered left. Interesting, I thought. Is he left-handed? Then I wondered, is he Japanese? Because the Japanese drive on what we in the U.S. think of as “the wrong side of the road.” So if he’s Japanese, his default will be to veer left.

            I’ll never know, since I didn’t stop him to ask. And do British people veer to the left when they are walking, as they also drive on “the wrong side of the road”?

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4 comments:

  1. Not sure… but that “wrong side of the road” thing does have a strong influence. After time in Japan with my military hubby, I was driving at home again on the “right side of the road” or so I thought until I found myself staring at a stop sign wondering why it was “on the wrong side of the road!” Luckily, it was a small town, not much traffic, and I was able to make the adjustment, no harm done.

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    1. P.S. This is Diane, newtreemom.

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  2. When I was in Australia I walked along the lower Yarra River in Melbourne every day after work for nearly two weeks - Australians veered left, and politely avoided me when I veered directly into their path. I could drive on the left side of the road with no issues, but put me on my feet and it was as though I couldn’t control my own legs!

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  3. So interesting that you could adjust to *driving* on the left with no problem, but not walking. Maybe because learning to drive is a conscious endeavor, but we learn to walk almost automatically — it's using different parts of our brain.

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