To the left, to the left
He studies pedestrian dynamics, and has walked right into question that has no answer yet
Call him the Captain Ahab of direction.
Dr. Iñaki Echeverría-Huarte has been chasing a strange little question with the stubbornness of Ahab pursuing the whale, except his white whale is not a whale. It is the human tendency to drift left.
While studying whether people keep a certain distance from one another during a stroll, Echeverría-Huarte noticed something odd: when people walk in groups, most of them veer left, or move counterclockwise.
So he tested it. Then tested it again. Across multiple experiments, he and his colleagues found that roughly 80% of walkers drift left, according to The New York Times 🔒.
Which raises the obvious next question: Why?
That's where the trail goes cold. His theories have not produced an answer. Five years later, the hunt continues, with Echeverría-Huarte now wondering whether fish and other animals also show a leftward bias.
"Fish are the canonical animal that move in circles," says his colleague.
Perhaps someone should check the whales.
