We had a left-hand drive car, manual transmission, when we lived in Micronesia, where drivers drive on the right. It really wasn’t any trouble.
Now we live in Indonesia, where people drive on the left. I don’t drive here but my husband does. Usually it is pretty obvious which side of the street you need to be on. If there is traffic, it’s obvious. If there is zero traffic…at least a mistake won’t kill you.
Having said that, BE CAREFUL. I’ve heard theories that side-of-the-road confusion may have been a factor in the traffic crash that badly injured Spalding Gray (and the injuries he sustained were almost certainly the most significant factor behind his eventual suicide).
Moreover, I had a chance to chat up a former traffic cop on the Big Island who did accident investigations. He knew of crashes, including fatal ones, where the biggest cause was almost certainly Japanese tourists driving on the wrong side of the road because it was nighttime, they were jet-lagged, and just not alert enough to stay on the proper side of the road. There is rarely much traffic on Hawaii, so you need to stay extra careful even when it seem like no one else is around.
The Little Basque Team grouched more and longer about motherfucking [del]Opel[/del]Vauxhall engineers hiding the motherfucking light controls in a hard to reach and hard to see spot rather than sticking them onto a stick coming off the wheel as God intended (wow, don’t try to read that in one breath)
than about the complication of having our feet work the same way while the window and gears had flipped places. Oh, and the gearbox flips places but doesn’t flip itself, so what used to be “push to shift up” became “pull to shift up”.
It took us a couple of days to learn what was flipped and what not; whenever we traveled back and forth it would take us maybe half an hour to get reaccustomed. The first roundabout after coming off the plane was always a bit of a brain scramble.
I’ve driven several times on the “wrong” side and have adapted to it quite easily. Obviously if you’re used to an automatic transmission, ask for one of those rather than the stick shift that’s more usual in the UK. I got used to the actual driving quite easily but I did have to think about turns just to be sure I wasn’t trying to turn into the wrong bit of carriageway.
When you pick up the car, take a while to make sure you know where the lights/indicators/wipers etc are - I had a rental car in New Zealand where I was sitting on the “right” side of the car but the wipers and indicators were on the opposite sides of the steering wheel to the car I drive at home so I did try indicating for a turn a couple of times and finding the wipers going!
I’d given some thought to relying on trains and such, but spousal unit and I are in our 60s, and he’s had 10 spinal surgeries, so hauling luggage in and out of trains will not pleasurable travel make. It might be doable if we base ourselves out of a city for several days and make side trips from there - more research will be required.
I was a pedestrian in London back in the early 80s, and I have vivid memories of being extra cautious before crossing streets - I may have strained my neck from looking left then right then left then right then… well, you know.
If we hit the lottery between now an then, we’ll just hire a car and driver and tour in relaxing luxury. Failing that (since we don’t usually buy lottery tickets) we shall see what happens.
There are a lot of RHD cars in the central Asian republics. In Kyrgyzstan, at least ten percent and maybe 20, from my observation. Many of the imports are second-hand cars that were acquired in a RHD country like Japan or India.
In Japan, apparently, environmental regulations militate against older cars, so a lot of used cars get wholesaled out of the country, and wind up in LHD destinations. I saw some in Somalia, too.
A few words of advice.
Get the smallest car you can, especially if you plan on taking country roads.
Last time I drove in England I ended up with an Audi station wagon, and the car was literally wider than the laneway. I could either hit bushes or be over the centre lane. My wife was not amused…
The speed limit on country lanes is also ridiculously high. Roads that would typically be 30 mph in the US will be 60 mph in the UK.
Any chance you’ve ridden a motorcycle? If you have, you won’t even blink at driving on the wrong side of the road.
I don’t have time to read the thread, so forgive me if this has been mentioned: From renting cars for week-long vacations every year or two in left-side countries like England and Malaysia, I have been surprised how quickly I adapt to driving on the left (and turning, etc). What takes longer is remembering to enter the car on the right. (Open door. Sit down. No steering wheel! Oops. Get out, walk around, try again).
And what I NEVER adapt to is the turn signal/windshield wiper levers. My wife and I still laugh as the week comes to an end, and I STILL activate the windshield wipers when intending to signal an upcoming turn.
How do so many people get the turn signals wrong? Are there some brands of cars that flip flop this on left-hand-drive versus right-hand-drive?
I’ve driven various Fords and Mercedes in South Africa and the VW camper van in New Zealand, and the turn signal stalk was always exactly where it should have been: on the left side of the steering column.
Many vehicles (indeed all I have owned or driven) have the turn signal on the side of the steering wheel closest to the driver’s door. For LHD vehicles that puts the turn signal on the left side of the steering wheel. For the RHD vehicles that puts the turn signal on the right side of the steering wheel.
I have lived in the Cayman Islands, where we drive left of centreline, for many years, initially driving LHD vehicles and now a RHD. The big adjustment for me is going back to the States. The first time back was a short trip to Miami. I picked up the rental car in an off airport lot and spent several minutes practicing turns in the area.
We often see tourists with difficulties with the driving here in Cayman. Gratefully all the rental cars have a different coloured license plate. So when we see a car with a white plate flip on its wipers on a bright sunny day we all know to slow down. Something is about to happen and it might not be good!
The most dangerous aspect of driving confusion seems to be in isolated areas where you do not have other traffic to provide visual cues. More than one tourist has pulled out of a parking area onto a deserted road in a remote part of the island only to end up in a head on collision when they round a bend in the road. Indeed one fatal accident played out this way with the driver’s wife dying in the collision. Then prosecutors started to bring charges of causing death by dangerous driving before eventually dropping the matter. Sad state all around.
Pay very close attention when pulling into traffic or turning. My mom was in a terrible accident in Ireland when she pulled out onto a road and likely looked the wrong way (she doesn’t remember much and was pretty shaken up).
Living near Orlando for a decade it seemed like every year or so there was an accident where an English tourist got off the plane, rented a car, and within a few hours had a fatal head on or t-bone collision.
Obviously the vast majority do just fine, but when something does go wrong it seems to do so catastrophically. Be careful.
All good advice from Kiber.
Driving on the “wrong” side is not a big issue. But if you’re going somewhere like the UK the prevelance of roundabouts, complex junctions and fast country roads can take some adjustment.
Like some others, I had much less difficulty adjusting than I expected. I wouldn’t say I ever got comfortable–I drove several hundred miles across a two-week period–but for the most part it was pretty smooth going. I imagine you would find the same to be the case.
Three things, however:
–Although I am adept at driving a stick shift here in the US (I never owned an automatic transmission car till I was 40), I opted to pay a little extra for automatic when I rented in the UK and Ireland. I figured that might be more than I could handle. I’ll never know what “might have been,” but I don’t regret that decision at all.
–As has been mentioned, the traffic circles were extremely confusing. Part of it is that I dislike traffic circles in general, even when I am driving on the familiar side of the road, but part of it isn’t: anyway, I always greeted the ones in Ireland and the UK with trepidation, and I found I really had to think through what I was about to do: which way to turn, how to gauge the speed of oncoming traffic, etc. I’d humbly suggest you pay special attention when you come to these monstrosities.
–The thing that I REALLY found difficult, though, was judging my position with regard to objects on my left–lane markings, guardrails, other cars, etc. I remember learning to drive here in the US and having some difficulty figuring out where things were on my right. Then I taught my wife to drive and my kids to drive and saw that they had trouble with this long past the time when they had mastered most other skills. So I guess it isn’t entirely surprising. Mostly I managed fine, on streets, highways, and and two-land “country” roads alike, but it was always a little tricky, and at one point it became more than just tricky. I was traveling on a one-way street that had a narrow chokepoint. The left side of the street was used for parallel parking, but then the parking ended abruptly and the curb swung some distance into the street itself before swinging back out, and for some reason there was a small decorative statue along the curb right at the narrowest point. I slowed–I was already traveling slowly because it was an urban street–checked the width of the street, gauged the width of the car, slid slightly to the right to be sure I had room, and confidently drove forward–whereupon the left front bumper collided with the statue. I would have sworn up and down that I had allowed enough room, but the reality was clearly otherwise. --All’s well that ended well, but judging that distance turned out to be really difficult, and I would just alert you that you may have more trouble with that than you’d expect.
A friend and I went to England way back in 1976. We drove an automatic.
For the first few days, when I was driving and my friend was navigating, when he said turn right, I’d turn left and vice versa. I finally asked him to please point. I’d also turn on the windshield wiper when making a turn, because the column controls are are NOT reversed. But I was okay with the non-reversed pedals.
On only one occasion, I passed another car (on the right) on a 2-lane road and forgot to go back to the left lane for 2 or 3 seconds. There was an oncoming car, too. Somewhat scary, but nobody went off the road or got hit.
As a passenger, I didn’t have a problem with sitting on the “wrong” side. I rather enjoyed it. My friend never complained when I was driving.
I haven’t read the whole thread, so apologies if this is repeated information. I drove on the right-hand side of the road for the first time last year, and I found it challenging but doable. Things that I found really helped:
having been a passenger for several years in countries where people drive on the right, so it wasn’t quite such a sudden transition
having someone else with me in the car, both to share driving duties and point out where I was making slight mistakes that could have led on to something worse
automatic transmission - I would have been a lot less comfortable in a manual
starting out on a highway and only gradually moving onto narrower roads, and finally into city traffic. I’d hate to dive into London-style traffic as my first experience
having a clear GPS that could be relied on. Speed limits were a problem, as we were driving in Romania, and the limits weren’t clearly indicated on all roads. The UK is slightly better that way, although my Swiss SO still finds it a bit confusing and has to occasionally check limits with me.
I, like a lot of people here, found that I had problems positioning the car accurately. This was particularly a problem on narrow streets and while making turns, and it took me about half a day to really feel comfortable with this. I kept moving too far to the right, and then over-compensating and moving too far to the left. My co-driver was really patient with this, and that helped a lot.
I found that I made most of my mistakes on multi-lane one-way roads. The absence of any oncoming traffic meant that I would naturally gravitate to the leftmost lane, which in my instinctive response is the safest, but of course that’s the fast lane in these situations. I was also hyper-alert when I first started, and I think the most dangerous situation is when you’re slightly more confident and perhaps relax a trifle and shift into automatic driving mode. No incidents, but a couple of close calls.
Switching back when I got back to the UK was difficult for a bit - about 15-20 minutes of feeling very unsettled, but that rapidly went away.
Huh. That’s an odd one. So your sense of “right” and “left” was reversed by sitting on the right side? Interesting how these things affect different people.
:smack: I meant of course hugging the LEFT shoulder… but that’s exactly the kind of mode-switching of automatic stuff that fell apart!
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I knew this still didn’t sound right! What I was actually doing during my first days of driving was hugging the centerline. I could tell where my side (driver’s side, right side) of the car was; I didn’t yet have that intuitive feel for where the far side (passenger’s side, left side) of the car was. So I was driving along dreading each encounter with oncoming traffic, wincing, afraid to get farther than ~ 3 feet from the centerline (lest I plant the left wheels into a railing or something) but also of coruse afraid to get closer than ~3 feet from the centerline for obvious reasons…
