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Comment by toyg | Hacker News Reader

Tiredness, luggage, children, trying to make sense of directions, being in company... so many reasons not to walk. In fact, I bet most people never walk at all on an escalator.

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Wow. I’ve always been so baffled by this mentality.

The number of people who are otherwise healthy but refuse to walk up stairs just shocks me. I’ve never felt like walking up an escalator carried any significant risk for the able bodied...

I don’t know how to explain it except that people are shockingly lazy and just overall have really screwed up risk assessment

My explanation is, the escalators and elevators are the "little socialism" for the people: they provide free service and in order to consume it fully, nobody moves. I have friends running marathons but still using elevators when on work.

Does this mean you always prefer using stairs over escalators?

Not sure about parent poster, but I try to always use the stairs unless they are not convenient (e.g. not right next to the escalators).

I've got long enough legs to comfortably ascend two stairs at once and I prefer the exercise as well as the speed of ascent and descent.

Yes. Even elevators, but I’ll take the elevator if I’m with people or the stairs are hard to find (you’d be surprised sometimes)

Do those people get stuck in place when walking into a staircase, until paramedics come to rescue them? Escalators are just stairs, except you get to the other end faster.

Being tired is a fair point, but that's why there was left/right side compromise.

This is how I’ve always thought about it, but I’m realizing now that that’s the minority opinion. From the user’s reference frame, escalators behave the same as stairs until you hit the end (as long as you don’t sit on the railing thingy)

You forgot laziness... even though it's probably the most common one.

Still not sure it should be encouraged, though.

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