The Practical Implications of Allowing Shopping Trolleys Four Swiveling Wheels

When we went to our first larger grocery store here, I was quite pleasantly surprised to find that all four wheels on my trolley swiveled. This, at least, is something they got right. I took great joy in maneuvering around the aisles and all the obstacles in them. "Why don't we do this in America?" I wondered.

Well, it turns out that trolleys with four swiveling wheels are like nuclear weapons: when I have them they are awesome, but when other people have them they are a menace.

American carts with their two fixed rear wheels subtly enforce order. They are designed to move only forward, and make fairly wide and easy to predict turns at the end if the aisle. While it is harder to extract yourself from a snarl, it's also harder to get into those snarls and easy to predict the flow of traffic.

With four swiveling wheels however, all bets are off. There is no way at all to guess where folks will move, as the carts can go any direction at any time. This leads to constant snarls and mutually assured destruction. It's pure chaos.

In the end, and this is getting absurdly deep for a post about shopping carts, I think that it's worth the sacrifice of a little person freedom in the name of greater harmony. That doesn't mean that I am going to cancel my uranium enrichment program though.