I worried about it when I went to Australia, planning on just slowly easing my way from the Hertz agency onto the freeway.
Instead, I found my brain switched effortlessly, and I was parallel parking in downtown Sydney within an hour, and I had no problems the whole week, across five cities in three states. Turned on the wipers quite a few times when I meant to signal a turn, though.
As others have said, it takes a bit to get used to lane positioning.
The other thing if you are used to the wider roads of the US is how narrow things are in the UK (and older urban areas of Europe). It’s considered commonplace to drive at a reasonable speed down narrow roads with little to spare between the tips of your wing mirrors and the wing mirrors of parked cars and cars coming the other way.
When I drove professionally as a courier truck driver in London, the occasional wing mirror touch resulting in a broken mirror was considered just an “ordinary cost of doing business”.
When I returned to Australia I found myself bemused by drivers who slowed down and acted like it was a substantial drama if, for example, there was a badly parked car making the available roadway a little narrow. The same situation in the UK would be seen as entirely unremarkable.
Lived in Japan for 25 plus years with frequent trips back to the States.
With two focused people it shouldn’t be a problem. Whenever I have to make a transition I use my hands to help make a mental note to keep right or left, whichever is required on turns.
I’ll also ditto the advice about asking for automatic. When I rented a car in England, I was living in Japan and didn’t have the right hand/left hand thing to worry about, but it was an annoyance to deal with shifting with the “wrong” hand.
Driving in the US for me was no problem. It was being a passenger which was worse, my brains would think wrong turn damnit, no wait this is correct actually.
And why all the roundabout warnings? The US had roundabouts, I have seen them.
Princhester no kidding. A few weeks after I moved to the U.K, I saw a Royal Mail Lorry trailer speeding through my narrow street with cars on either side, nearly squishing me in the process.:eek:
ETA: I had the chance to drive manual in the US and refused, was not confident about being able to shift with the right hand.
While roundabouts are becoming more common, I’d venture to guess that the vast majority of American drivers are unfamiliar with them, judging by what happens when I do encounter one and see what other drivers do.
I live in Canberra, we have roundabouts every 25m, people are still clueless.
Wait, there are gaps between the roundabouts? That’s not how I remember it.
Heh, this reminds me of the time we (Kiwis living in the UK) hired a car in Texas and I was chief navigator.
I would call out the instructions as “lefty loosey” and “righty tighty” to help my husband remember to make the turns loose or tight. It sounded silly, but it really worked! Of course, you’ll need to find some sayings which are the opposite of that…
Be prepared for British roads to be **a lot narrower **once you get off the motorway. At times, they will literally be a single lane. I find that British drivers are very considerate and will self-regulate to allow cars from both directions to get through in good time.
If you need to turn into a street that has traffic already queuing up, you’ll also find that oncoming drivers will often flash their lights to indicate they are letting you turn into the street ahead of them.
I also find that British drivers are very considerate about allowing cars to change lanes on the motorway. (This is compared to New Zealand’s bloody-minded drivers who will speed up to prevent you from entering ‘their’ lane.)
When in doubt, go slow. Don’t miss a turn-off and think you’ll take the next one - there might not be a next one that will take you to the same destination without a huge detour. Many of these roads are ancient routes and they weren’t mapped out for cars.
A self-driving tour of GB sounds fantastic, by the way. Since coming to the UK ten years ago, my husband and I have driven the length and breadth and thoroughly enjoyed it. Get off the motorway as often as you can (when time allows) because there are so many beautiful villages to explore.
And the British ones tend to be more complicated–you can have two or three of the things stuck together and have to navigate from one circle to the next.
When I rented a car in Colchester last spring to drive around in the countryside and go up to Lavenham and over to Layer Marney, one of the things I rehearsed and planned most carefully on Google maps was coming back into the city from the west side and getting back to the car rental office without driving through the center of town or going through a particularly tricky-looking roundabout at the south end of St. Andrews Avenue–it’s a number of loops on a larger traffic ring. But then I got lost and to get back into familiar territory, wound up going through the town and navigating at least 2 loops of that same roundabout to get gas at the Tesco’s before I took the car back. Colchester holds no further terrors for me.
I spent about 70 nights in the UK last year and rented a car each time. A couple observations, most of which have been mentioned already.
Definitely consider renting an automatic. It’ll cost more and you’ll have to reserve ahead of time - since most of their cars are stick shift. But it’s one less thing for your brain to work out.
I’d suggest watching some youtube vids of roundabouts. Just getting a sense for the traffic flow is really valuable. Once you get the hang of it - you’ll love them. But it’s definitely a transition. I always flew into Manchester and leaving the airport after a redeye from the states while going through multiple overlapping roundabouts was the hardest part by far.
Sat nav or phone directions helped a lot. They’ll let you know, as you approach a roundabout, which way to go (left, right, straight, etc.) which always helped me tremendously. Just knowing what to expect ahead of time was a huge help.
Car positioning is an issue. In my experience, Americans tend to drift too far to the left and often hit curbs with their front left wheel. I guess it’s better than hitting oncoming traffic - but do be aware. I did notice that every time I returned my rental (hire) car, the minute they heard my accent they went straight to the front left wheel and gave it a very thorough inspection.
Overall, in my experience, UK drivers are much better than American drivers. They not only seem to have more skills (handling narrow roads at higher speeds with little clearance, stick shifts, etc.), they are also much more polite. My morning commute involved getting into a large bumper-to-bumper backup and I never had to wait more than 2-3 cars before someone would let me in.
Speaking of the above, the speeds permitted on country roads are significantly higher than any American road would have posted. If you like driving, this is great and can be good fun. If you’re nervous or don’t like the speed, you may find a line of drivers getting antsy behind you. If you do, consider pulling over and letting them pass. You’ll be appreciated for it.
Having considered all of the above - definitely go for it. It’ll take a bit of a transition, but you’ll get the hang of it soon enough.
This has been our experience as well. I did cheat slightly and drive a fairly empty parking lot getting used to the car before venturing out into the roads but I adapted OK and reasonably quick. A bus on the other hand - I was one terrified passenger and when the OW faced the same situation she picked a seat inside and back and didn’t look out the front window very much.
The basics:
driving on the left instead of the right on a 2+ lane road, in and of itself: easy
making a left turn at an intersection: easy
shifting a stick-shift with my left hand: easy
making a right turn at an intersection: a bit more complicated; I usually depend on a rapid eyescan and a back-of-the-brain evaluation of what I’ve seen to decide whether it is “safe”; I could no longer trust that and had to consciously think of what I was glancing at — DOES there appear to be a vehicle in the oncoming lane which would be the far lane when glancing to my left and the near lane when glancing to my right.
Most difficult adjustments:
For the first five or six times I sat behind the wheel, I found it horrifying that I had no gut sense of where the left-hand edge of my car was. On a two-lane road I would wince and hope I wasn’t about to smash into the oncoming car. I just hugged the right shoulder as tight as possible. Then one day it just “clicked” and my old intuitive sense of the dimensions of a car around me was working again.
Edinburgh has one of those enormous roundabouts that link not just two roads intersecting at a right angle but three or four, at odd angles, with the roudabout itself being a huge thing and cars flying in and heading out constantly.
I had to maneuver that damn thing on the very first day of car rental to get to our B&B and get our bags. This evoked all that clumsiness of being able to glance and establish “it is safe” — from a ridiculous number of compass points as I circled around, going clockwise. Chickened out the first time around the loop and kept circling. On the second pass, bravely shot across the traffic lanes of two crossroads to get to the correct one, only to (of course) arrive at the destination road in the freaking right hand lane with an oncoming car honking at my stupid American ass.
Snipping and bolding mine.
I think I found your problem. 
Yes… IME this was way more dangerous than the driving aspect.
We teach people “look both ways” before crossing a street, but in practice we seem to check each individual lane as we cross it. That’s a recipe for a crunchy splat in a reversed-lane situation.
Some thoughts based on my experiences driving in England:
Consider maybe getting train passes instead? 
OK, I’m not entirely joking. Using trains, public transportation, and taxis (Uber?) can end up saving you a lot of stress involved with driving (driving on the other side, directions, traffic, parking). That being said, Britrail passes are not cheap.
My biggest issue with the switch to the other side was judging my position. Other people have noted their position in the lane while driving, but my biggest problem was parking lots…er…car parks. I had the damndest time, when pulling into a space, figuring out how close I was to the cars next to me.
Absolutely get a GPS. We’re used to big, green street signs with white letters in the US. In the UK, you get a tiny white sign on a lichen covered wall off to the side of the road, and ivy is growing over it. That’s if there is a street sign. Looking up turns on Google street view ahead of time is a great idea too.
Highways aren’t designated North, South, East, West. They’re based on destination. For example, if you’re going from Heathrow to Stonehenge, you’ll take the motorway (freeway) to A303 toward Exeter (not A303 westbound). Coming back, you’ll take A303 toward London (not A303 eastbound).
In the roundabout, I typically stayed in the left lane to make an easy exit, but this bit me in the rear end a few times, when I ended up in an “exit only” lane and had to exit the roundabout earlier than I wanted to. Be cautious of this.
There are no yield signs. The white dashed line painted on the road (such as in front of a roundabout) means to yield. You’ll find this to be very important.
Be conservative in your driving. Better to piss people off because you’re being overly cautious than to piss them off because you’re running into them.
I think I found your problem.
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:smack: I meant of course hugging the LEFT shoulder… but that’s exactly the kind of mode-switching of automatic stuff that fell apart!
The transition is no trouble at all, though I recommend not starting a drive after dark. The problem will come when you return home and have to shift back.
Actually, it’s in the Highway Code (rule 169) that slow-moving traffic has to pull over.
If I can do it, just about anyone can.
As mentioned, driving in the other side isn’t that hard. What’s a bit harder is telling where you are in the road. Sometimes you have to think twice before making a turn, but it works out.
I did find that it was hard to drive at night in rural England. The smaller roads have no streetlights, twist and turn all over, and my headlights never seems up to the task. I found myself going slow and finding a spot to pull over if someone was behind me.
Exit only lane? What’s that?. Observe the tread lines from actual usage and weep. The south exit outer lane is supposed to be exit only but this is not enforced by the lane actually ending! Plus, as you can tell by the wear lines, the inner lane is optional right turn to the east, and as you can see from the marked traffic lines the outer lane is FUCKING OPTIONAL FORWARD AT THE SAME DAMN TIME. When I enter this traffic circle I make sure no one is in the lane next to me lest they cause a low speed collision!
Yeah, roundabouts here definitely take a bit of getting used to. Here’s the official guidance.