From my recent experience, I think I have some useful advice for people driving on the other side of the road. It seems that the obvious isn’t a problem at all, but the things noone has ever mentioned are very important. Of course, this advice comes from someone used to driving on the right, so thats the prospective I am coming from. I assume, just reverse right and left to go the other way.
The first thing both my wife and I noticed was the huge tendency to occupy the left part of the lane. I can’t quite explain it, but there seems to be a huge tendency to drift to the left of the lane. To avoid this, hug the right of the lane like mad. Keep in mind that you, the driver, are on the right, so you can see the right clearly.
Next is turning right across traffic. It is extremely unnerving, there is no way around it. Your every instinct tells you to look the other way. It doesn’t matter that there are no cars in the oncoming lane for kilometers, you will the other way to be sure for a week at least. Worse yet, at first you might kind of ignore those cars in the oncoming lane.
Walking across traffic is just a huge nightmare. Just always look both ways, because most likely you are looking the wrong way.
Bonus: Roundabouts
Surprisingly, these things are great if you know the golden rule: Yield to the right. It doesn’t matter who got where first. The guy to the right that’s gonna hit you if you get in to the circle wins.
Specifically for Wellington New Zealand I do have some specific advice. Some of these extremely windy streets are very narrow. Nevertheless people park on them. The city of Wellington employs Doctor Who technology to allow this. Specifically, the parked cars fold in their mirrors because there just isn’t enough fucking room for the mirrors, parked cars and two lanes of busy traffic.
Having driven manuals on both sides of the road (in Australia, the US and England), I found this no problem at all. What I get most confused by after making a switch is that the turn indicators and the windscreen wiper controls are on the wrong side, so I often turn on the windscreen wipers when wanting to signal a turn.
I adjusted to this very rapidly. I really had no problem driving on the Other Side of the Road in Ireland and Scotland. I was more disturbed by the narrowness of the roads. And, in Ireland, my inability to see around corners.
This was my biggest issue in Ireland recently. Added to the narrow roads, it didn’t help my wife’s nerves (she’s a poor passenger to begin with).
The only time I had a close call was turning right. I made the mistake of looking for traffic coming from my left first, then looking to the right second.