SO you think you are an effective shopper, capable of fighting the crowds to get quickly from shoe shop to shopping mall? Well, think again, says new Franco-Swiss research.
A study of pedestrian behaviour in a busy high street has shown that shoppers are inefficient. Unlike more competent species, such as ducks and geese which form streamlined groups to increase their velocity, humans trundle along in a way that cuts their average speed between stores by about a fifth.
Our problem is that we fall into U- or V-shaped formations so we can chat with our companions, but this slows both our progress and that of people coming the other way. We are clearly more concerned with chatting than arriving at our destination.
A team of scientists analysed groups of pedestrians and found people moved into formations designed to ease conversation and eye contact, but which slowed things down.
The study found that a group would get to the next shop more quickly by splitting up or copying migrating geese to form an inverse-V - with a leader at the front and followers fanning out behind, but noted, "while the main thing for geese is speed, the main thing for humans is communication".
The survey also found that the average person instinctively moves to the left to avoid people coming the other way in Asia, and to the right in Europe.
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