Now I know that this was asked a long time ago (1994). In that year I wasn’t old enough to own a bank account and in the UK there wasn’t and still isn’t (as far as I know) such a thing as a drive-thru ATM.
However, if they did exist and someone asked me that question then my reply would be ‘Because the driver don’t always sit on the same side all of the time. Yo diggety?’
In the UK we are used to seeing cars with a left hand steering wheel as this is the norm in the rest of Europe but I can only imagine that in the US more folks have seen a UFO than a right hand steering car.
Still, it reaffirms my faith in the US banking system that if I somehow become a legal alien with hydrochloric acid in my eyes then my wife and I can pull up to a drive-thru ATM in my UK imported Rolls-Royce and I still don’t have to tell the cow my PIN number.
Doesn’t follow. It’s true that in the US, drivers sit on the left, and in the UK, they’re on the right. But it’s also true that in the US, ATMs are on the left side of the lane, and in the UK, if they had them, they’d be on the right. It’s got to be extremely rare for a driver to pull up to an ATM that’s on the opposite side, no matter what country you’re in.
No, the simplest explanation is that it’s cheaper to use the same model keypad for both drive-up and walk-up ATMs than it is to manufacture two different models.
Actually, it’s not a road tunnel, but a train tunnel in which the train carries cars. But it was true before then because of the ferries across the channel, and cross pollination of cars from the continent.
You can find occasional wrong side cars in the US as well, such as some postal vehicles and one off imports.
Speaking of which, intersting difference between my home city (in AUS), and my home city (in USA): In AUS, the post boxes face the footpath. So you can post mail from the footpath. In (my neck of the woods), post boxes face the street. So you can post mail without getting out of your car.
I don’t imagine it was always that way. When did it start? Is it universal?
Actually, they face the street so that the postman can pick up and deliver mail from his vehicle. U.S. Postal vehicles have the steering wheel and controls on the right side of the vehicle and the driver can get out of his truck without having to step out in traffic and walk around the front of it. He can exit on the curbside which is safer. It also eliminates extra steps which saves the driver’s time out on his route.
Wait, were you talking about individual private residence mailboxes or the big upright mailboxes people use just for mailing things? I may have gotten your terminology a bit confused. I thought you were speaking of individual residential mailboxes and my apologies if you weren’t.
Me, neither. My local post office does have a drive thru lane with boxes you can put mail in by leaning out the window of your car, but all of the other boxes I’ve seen along sidewalks face in so that pedestrians can use them. And I assume they’re all the same kind of box, just positioned differently.
Residential mailboxes, both the resident and the postman need to be able to put mail into and take mail out of the mailbox. Easiestly accomplished by having one door that both use.
My apartment had a bank of mailboxes, with individual locked doors on the front for the residents and a back room that the postal worker could access to put mail into the boxes. I presume he didn’t need individual keys, just the lock to the door of the room. I assume that the banked mailboxes that modern housing additions use are similar - front doors for the individual residents, a back door that the postal worker can open all at once.
For public mailboxes (the big blue boxes), the slot is typically oriented to best support the user. I have seen several posted where cars can drive to them and drop mail in from the driver’s seat. The access to remove is a bigger hatch below, IIRC on the same side as the drop slot. I am not familiar with this type being used along sidewalks. YMMV.
In my experience, most big US PO boxes open on the footpath side, with a flap door at the top for mailing, and a locked cabinet door on the bottom for picking up. Some also have an extra slot in a chute at the back, facing the traffic side, for mailing from a car. I remember those chutes as first appearing in the late 1950s, but they might be older than that.
(You may click on the photo to view it full size.)
These particular dropboxes have a vehicle-accessible envelope slot on the street-side (not useful for drivers, perhaps, but passengers can easily reach it). On the sidewalk side, there is a hatch into which one can drop both envelopes and larger parcels. And the sidewalk side also has the postal-worker access door, logically enough.
Powers &8^]
