Are there any other modal text editors in wide use?
All others I can think of have you strongly in one mode (insertion, typing) and you only drop out of it if you hold down a command key (Control, or pull down a menu, etc.). Before GUIs it was a lot more common to have 'entry mode' and command mode in your text editor/word processor, but vim is the only one I know of now where 'insert' is merely one mode, and by default you're in a movement/command mode.
Not saying it's bad; I spend most of my day in vim and wouldn't have it any other way.