4/18/20 Wrong way buddy!
11Seeing this thread from @jst1ofknd made me decide to pull a question I was gonna use for later in the month to today.
Have you ever driven a car in a place that practices “left hand traffic”, i.e. drive on the left side of the road?
Did you find it hard to adapt?
We did a trip to Ireland once with friends and after driving there for several days I had a stop in France on the way home to see some relatives. While I didn’t have any trouble getting back into using RHT I did have to think twice about which was the passing lane for the first half day or so.
One of the things that has made driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road in those places I have done it (Grand Cayman/Cayman Brac, Scotland, Ireland, Barbados, St Lucia) much easier now is use of a GPS device/app. It is very helpful when you approach the ubiquitous roundabouts and keeps you from turning the wrong way into the traffic circle if there is not very much traffic to follow. It doesn’t, however, keep you from walking up to the wrong door of the car…
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I haven’t had the pleasure of driving on the opposite side of the road but I was once almost killed by someone doing so. Many, many years ago a few friends and I went out to a bar (okay - a strip club to see Jenna Jameson) that was about an hour away. The road going home is 2 lanes in each direction (422 for you locals) but it splits apart at one point with some trees in the middle where you can’t see the other side. It was at this point where we’re cruising along in the right hand lane when a car flies past us in the left hand lane, going the opposite direction. He was headed north in the southbound lanes. Thank goodness my friend was driving as he tends to drive somewhat slow and cautious and usually stays in the right lane. When we realized we just missed a head on crash at 50+ mph it really shook us up. Yup, definitely could have died that night. Jenna was great, but not -that- great.
@cinoclav Something sort of similar happened to me once - car was entering the highway on the off ramp and I was exiting the highway. Luckily as soon as that car saw me he jammed on his brakes and swerved to his right and the cement barrier. That was fortunate he went right since I did the same on my right. Then he backed up the off ramp. I stayed on the shoulder until he was off the ramp as I didn’t want to risk getting rear ended if someone was going to get off behind me. By the time I got up the off ramp he was already on the on ramp.
I once saw someone driving down the wrong side of the highway - fortunately for me on the other side of the highway. No idea if there was an accident from that as I was driving home from Houston and so didn’t see any news that day.
@cinoclav @Kidsandliz Back when I rode a motorcycle I had a brush with someone in Fargo that turned left out of a parking lot that was on a divided highway, figuring he (?) could make the intersection and the crossover before any traffic got to him. Evidently I was invisible that day.
That same trip someone pulled right out in front of me from another lot as I approached, and another idiot turned right from the left lane, across my path. I thought I would never get than bank drop done.
@chienfou @cinoclav Lots of people seem to not “see” motorcycles or bikes or figure they will just ride the far side of the lane so there is room for them too.
@chienfou I’ve ridden cycles since I was 11. Have an old one in the garage that just needs too much work to bother with at this point. I’ve considered getting another one but it’s just not much fun to ride anymore. People are way too oblivious these days.
When I worked in the UK I was not only driving that way but driving a canvas topped ex-military truck full of students in the back. It actually is fine most of the time because the steering wheel is on the other side and my brain made the go straight down the road switch pretty automatically. I found initially it took some thought making turns and on traffic circles (roundabouts). And I worried that having the exact opposite initial emergency to miss an accident pull to the side of the road would mean I’d pull into traffic (fortunately never had to test that one). Also when you’d cross the street and the first look left (and possibly start walking) and then right reflex reversed. That took more thought than I expected.
What was really funny was once when I was back home here I had a dream that I didn’t know which side of the road to drive on, no cars were coming by so I could tell… Finally in my dream, much relieved, I figured out to look to see which side of the car had the steering wheel.
Of course that wouldn’t have worked in Cambodia (which is drive on the right if) since in the road you have cars with steering wheels on either side, motorcycles often with a zillion people on them and some pulling trailers, bikes where some are pulling huge (for the bike) trailers, tuc tucs (bike with “taxi” seat on two wheels in the front of the bike), sometimes horses and donkeys pulling trailers, sometimes elephants with people on them…
Your biggest safety feature was a working horn. If there were seatbelts they were likely buried in the seat crack of the car. The center line was merely for decoration. He who made eye contact first had to give way. If you were trying to cross the street just start walking while looking at your feet (eye contact thing again) and traffic would flow around you. Fortunately it was chaos in slow motion (for the most part in slow motion anyway).
I’ve never been outside the US.
I spent some time driving during a couple visits to New Zealand (where they drive on the left Brit-style). I was surprised to find I had no problem adjusting to the manual shift lever on the left, but I was constantly turning on the windshield wipers when trying to signal a turn and looking out the driver’s side window to check the rear-view mirror. One evening, returning to the hotel after a nice dinner in Wellington, I was in the right-hand lane of a one way street. I needed to turn right so I pulled up to the (red) signal light, checked for traffic, then turned right into the right-hand lane of the two-way cross street - just like I would at home in the US. I instantly realized my mistake, but there was a block-long divider between the lanes, so I had to quickly drive in the wrong lane to the next intersection, switch to the left lane and proceed. Fortunately there was no other traffic (or police) around at the time.
@macromeh Oh HELL yeah… That wiper thing got me for the first several trips each time I went to a country with RHT. Eventually I would remember, but still slip up every now and then. I also shot wiper fluid onto the windshield when I wanted to flash my lights at someone a lot of the time…
@macromeh My cousin routinely went 3 houses the wrong way down their road (residential, not busy, but off a main road) to their house. They figured if a cop ever caught them they would say they just realized it was one way and were turning around to go back.
St Croix is left lane driving in US-style cars. I have occasionally turned into the wrong lane, but luckily with the benefit of passengers who are not shy with the helpful advice.
@aetris Hmm you are saying there is an actual use for back seat drivers on rare occasion? Don’t tell my kid! LOL. Actually I think it would be harder to drive with the steering wheel on the “wrong” side for the side of the road you are driving.
I drove in Grand Cayman with Right Hand Drive cars in the Left Hand lane. It was a flawless trip until I LITERALLY was pulling back into the rental parking lot and took a left into the wrong lane.
No accident but they yelled and my driving credibility/prowess had been lost.
We lived in England for a little over 3 years until mid-1991, with a number of visits since. The best advice I heard was to practice driving on the local military base, turning from parking lots or one-way streets (without the cue of which side to drive on) into two-way streets. The speed limit was low enough that you probably wouldn’t get killed if you screwed up.
I started with a UK rental car, and ended up with a sore hand by shifting the door handle with my right instead of the gear shifter with my left - pain is a powerful teacher. And yeah, that windshield wiper/lights thing.
Once I had that down, our US spec car (VW Rabbit) arrived. (Getting it insured was amusing; one place turned me down for being a “maniac” because of the “enormous” 1.6 liter engine - I dryly informed him that I took my drivers license test in a 7.2 liter station wagon, thus cementing his opinion of me and all other Yanks. Another very charming insurer burst out laughing when I told her I was driving a Rabbit, but she did insure me despite the engine. Interestingly, they didn’t care about my speeding tickets when calculating my rates.)
My wife refused to drive at first, for fear of driving on the wrong side. So I put a big yellow sticky note on the dashboard, with an arrow pointing to which side of the road to drive on. That turned out to be a really effective reminder for both of us.
Usually driving from the curbside of the car was a disadvantage, but on rare occasions I could easily make manuevers that would have been insane in a proper UK spec car. And yes, I eventually learned to love the roundabouts and other oddities of UK motoring.
I’m far more worried about being a pedestrian when I visit the UK, because of the habit of looking left when crossing the street.
@mehcuda67 Yeah that habit of looking left nearly got me a few times when I worked in the UK.
@Kidsandliz @mehcuda67 When we led student tours to Europe that was always something we stressed before and during the trip if it included a time in the UK. It was still hard to remember for some kids and thankfully none of them ever stepped out into traffic since someone in the group would always remember which way to look last…
@chienfou @mehcuda67 I can believe that as some students often don’t think anyway, let alone consciously think about changing habits like you have to do to cross the street safely there. I also took college students on trips over spring breaks and it could be “interesting” at times to say the least. Most of the time things went really well, students were great… every once in a while though when they didn’t think and then got unlucky (gotta love that lack of frontal lobe development) there were “issues”.
The worst was once in Bermuda (Nassau), before they were let loose for the afternoon. I had just given the “talk” about most of the buy one dope cigarette at a time “dealers” were government informants, just don’t do it as I won’t be able to get you out of jail, we will leave you behind when we leave the island, you/your parents signed a paper telling you that, the USA and Bermuda justice system are not all that similar blah blah blah…
Not even an hour later the boat got a visit from the cops. Two students (19 or 20 year olds) were picked up for doing exactly that. Stupid. By the grace of who knows what gods I managed to get them sprung late the next day (their parents wired money which I am sure helped) but then I had to watch them 24/7 until we left that island since they were released into the boat’s/my care (this was a spring break trip I had organized on a boat I had worked on in the past) so I missed out on my tourist time while there (they had to stay on the boat and so so did I). Idiots.
I saw a longish “motor vehicle review” online a decade or so ago.
Several U.K. based vehicle enthusiasts got hold of a “full-out-luxe” US spec Ford F250 King Cab Longbed Dually. With monster tires.
And then they proceeded to drive it all over the U.K. and Northern Europe, having fun figuring out where it would or would not fit, showing off, and freaking out people by taking it (slowly) thru tiny streets.
They had a lot of “Oops! Won’t fit. Better back up” incidents.
I think those were deliberate. For the wonderful pix.
Having the controls on the wrong side for the U.K. was all part of the fun.
They basically played a huge American-style game of my truck is bigger than your truck for a few months.
I think they did the review in order to expense out all their adventures.
They said they were keeping the truck.
/image F250 king cab longbed dually
No.
N/A.
/giphy nope