> And other countries are any better...? Try replacing "Americans" with "people". Japanese escalator etiquette is impeccable. I used to take a four-story escal

> And other countries are any better...? Try replacing "Americans" with "people". Japanese escalator etiquette is impeccable. I used to take a four-story escalator at rush hour every morning and even though I’d walk past about 200 meters of people in line, the right side was always free for walkers. It’s gotten slightly worse in the past decade or so—I won’t speculate about the reasons—but people doing it wrong are very much still rare enough to be the unexpected annoyance.