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I used to live in the UK, and as a messy teenager my room wasn't the neatest...

It's more that because the cable exits the bottom of British plugs and it's bottom-heavy, if you drop a power cable on the floor, it will invariably land pin-side up.

US sockets aren't switched, so the only way to remove power from a device is to unplug it. Most things have power switches but not everything, and some people are very keen on unplugging.

Ahhhhh that might actually explain a lot - people's behaviour is affected by the design in that they end up unplugging more frequently due to the lack of a switch in the socket, so more cables laying around unplugged, versus the UK where plugs tend to be left in the socket but can be physically disconnected using the switch.