Your right of way? Or mine?

On pedestrian walkways, should you keep right or keep left?

If you are from a Commonwealth country, chances are you would keep left by habit. However, if you are from the States, or China or Europe or Philippines, it is natural that you tend to keep to the right.

Your cars are designed the opposite way, left hand drive for driving on the right side of the road, and vice versa.

Similarly, directions of elevator flows are also programmed this way. Left elevator up and right elevator down. It is simply a matter of convention.

However, things can be quite unruly in Singapore where half of the people you see every day in the CBD are, I guess, hail from foreign countries.

Although some planners of shopping complexes and MRT stations in Singapore have taken the trouble to facilitate the observance of this convention by demarcating their pedestrian passageways with directional arrows, few have bothered to follow. And on roads, it was free for all when light turns green for pedestrians!

And strangely, many elevators are programmed to go up on right and to down on left in Singapore! Maybe the engineers were trained in the “Right” hand country?

In a country like Singapore, where everybody seems to be in a hurry, temper can flare up if no one wants to give way.

I don’t mean to say that all these habits are wrong. But I think every country needs to stick to a system. And all visitors need to be advised of the practice in the country.

One of the current advisories you find in Singapore to citizens is “Be gracious”. Maybe this can be a campaign slogan.

And it might also help if leaflets stating such “norms” are handed to visitors each time they clear the Immigration counter.