I’ve done this in several countries (England, Japan, New Zealand, Australia & South Africa) - it never seemed like a big deal. OTOH I have a friend whose brother was killed in an accident in Wales that was probably due to his confusion about which lane to drive in.
Funny, I find them sensible and logical - wish we had more of them in the US (they exist in places like Massachussetts, but they’re rare).
If you were consistently able to walk to the correct side of the car, you are unusual - that’s the hardest thing for many.
My family stayed in England for 6 months when I was just out of college. I drove on back country roads. B roads I think they were called? That was easy, fun even.
My parents drove while we were in towns and highways. Once while my stepmother was driving we went aroundaroundaround a roundabout 7 times before finally being able to lunge off onto what turned out to be the wrong road anyway. No joke, we counted and all still laugh about it today.
The hardest thing to get used to for me - after yes going to the wrong side of the car - was looking into the mirrors. It never became automatic.
Yeah. There’s three types of road - motorway (freeway), A roads and B roads.
A roads are wide, well-maintained, often with two lanes. B roads can be anything from A road standard down to just wide enough to fit one car with maybe an inch of space either side before you get hedge and God help you if you meet someone coming the opposite direction.
Well, they do have passing places every so often but you learn to drive those roads carefully, especially when you come near a bend.
It has been years, but I used to work for an international rental car company. The best piece of advice is to not try to drive when you get off a USA-Europe flight. I have a hard enough time trying drive after flying across the United States. I would want my first experience in driving on the left to be after several hours in the air when I’m jet lagged.
Do you know when you really need to be careful in an opposite-side country? Walking. You’re fighting a lifetime of instinct to turn your head one way when checking for traffic before you cross the street.
But yeah, driving is no problem. It’s mostly follow-the-leader.
This tends to be found at locations where the traffic density has risen above that which will freely flow through a standard roundabout - the lights, while being more expensive and inconvenient, allow things to be controlled more effectively.
I haven’t been there either, but I would think it takes some weeks of getting used to. I don’t consider myself that great a driver anyway, especially in unfamiliar places. (Sebastian Flyte’s quote comes to mind: “Please return the bits to him if we crack up the car. I’m not very good at driving…”)
And it wouldn’t just be when driving. Even just waiting for buses and trains would be different as I’ve lived my life watching to the left for the next bus in the distance, or waiting for trains to come in on the right-hand platform, looking in the direction you are traveling. Jaywalking across a busy street with an island…no traffic coming on the left, OK it’s clear to the center… off I go…SCRRRREEEEECCCCHHH…SMASH…SPLAT!! (Oh yeah. I needed to look to the RIGHT here…!! It was a nice life anyway. Please send the bits back to Hardcastle, as he said…)
I go between Greece and the UK a lot, so swap over quite often, and I also used to give advice to British people hiring cars here in Greece, and this is the best tip I’ve come across.
Forget about the left vs. right thing and just focus on the fact that the driver is closest to the middle of the road and the passenger side is closest to the verge - exactly the same as when you drive back at home.
You’re probably best to get an automatic, but doing the gears with a different hand is not as hard as you might think.
Most of us Brits switch sides for vacations, several times in our lives. It’s much easier than you think to make the switch - it takes me about 10-20 minutes before I start to look in the correct spots for the mirrors without having to make the effort consciously.
The biggest issue is coping with the other side of the road, and a new driving style. For that reason I would recommend spending about 20 minutes driving around some quiet streets before getting into traffic.
If you’ve never driven a manual transmission, definitely try to book an automatic, as you don’t want to add a third hassle to the experience.
A good trick from my parents, who switch between the US and the UK for months at a time, is to stick a big arrow on the dash pointing at the side of the road that you are meant to drive on (bring the arrow home with you and put it there for a week after you get back). Once, after several days in the US, I was distracted and thinking about something else, and set off on an empty street on the wrong side of the road. As a truck barrelled head-on towards me, I was thinking “what’s that idiot doing driving on the wrong side of the road… oh… it’s me… HOLY CRAP!” ::swerve::
For me, the larger roundabouts/circles were very disorienting. We would look at the map and determine that we needed to go “right”. But you never actually make a “right” turn. You will always make a “left” - it’s just a question of when. (obviously this was more an issue with the larger roundabouts).
Not being used to this, my brain had a hard time catching up to having made an “effective right”. I think I was so used to the sensation of actually turning right when making a right, this input from my “servos” (mostly optical, I’m sure) would help with my sense of then proceeding in the desired direction. Without the expected servo input, and in fact, getting the opposite (when making a “right”) was very disorienting to me. Maybe having a compass along would have helped, but there were many times (night was even worse) when I felt like I was either going the wrong direction, or backtracking where I had just come from.
We were visiting friends in England so I had the experience of being a passenger while my friend drove for several days. My husband had the bright idea that we should rent a car and that I should be the driver because I am always the driver. The rental place gave us a brand new Mercedes automatic. (Don’t be too impressed, it was not a fancy Mercedes.)
They force you to buy the insurance. The insurance that you would not buy in the U.S. because you would be covered under your own insurance policy. This is a good thing.
I did okay, mainly. I tended to be to close to the curb and sometimes touch it.
So this one day I was pretty tired. We were in Shrewsbury looking for Brother Cadfael, but his Shrewsbury looked a lot different from the one I was driving in. We kept following these PARK signs and could not find the parking lot. Then I needed to turn right and I simply forgot that I didn’t have the right of way. A guy in a pick up truck hit me because he just could not believe that I was going to do something so stupid. His truck was fine. My car did exactly what it was supposed to do, I guess. It crunched up in the front.
The guy was really nice and let us use his phone to call the rental car place. We were right near a police station so many police drove by, completely ignoring the accident. That was okay with me.
The tow truck man drove us to our B&B. The next morning he picked me up and drove me to the rental car place. They were mad at me. It was a new car!
This experience cost me about $500, I think. That’s what I had to pay.
They assigned me another car which was a stick shift. Could I please have an automatic? NO. WE DO NOT HAVE AN AUTOMATIC.
I didn’t have to drive this car too much, but it was weird to shift with my left hand. The pedals were the same as in the U.S. I had to drive in some traffic on the highway but I did pretty well. I had to concentrate too hard, though.
So, next time. I don’t know. It was hard for me. Maybe you can do it.
We turned the car in then took the train to London.
You have to give way to people already in the traffic circle in the US, too, you know. I’ve heard that there are parts of the US that don’t have any, but they’re as common as dirt up here.
I don’t think I’d want to drive in the UK, and I find it startling that apparently it’s okay to just rent a car and take off, without any lessons on the differences first.
I once worked in a small orchard restaurant near Cambridge which is on a narrow, winding rural road.
We regularly got foreign tourists turning out of the entrace on the wrong side of the road, as there are no other visual indicators (parked cars, roadsigns etc) that show the direction of traffic. In fact we had a recovery firm on speed dial as you’d get sevearl incidents each summer.
I did exactly the same on a road in the Fens after living in Germany for a year - it’s worse when it’s quieter, as you slip into automatic driving mode and lack the visiual cues (like oncoming trucks!) to tell you which side to choose. Busy roads are, perhaps counter-intuitively, easier as the presence of an oncoming bus tends to focus the mind!
Drove in South Africa for 3 weeks 8 years ago. Only had one brain-dead moment, turned out from a side street and almost went onto the right side (divided road). Caught myself just in time and just went into the opposite side street and turned around. Even found shifting with my left hand to be pretty easily learned.
I drove in England on a vacation about three years ago. I loved it! Points I’d make:[ul]
[li]Even a day or so spent as a passenger can be extremely helpful just in seeing “how things work” over there.[/li][li]I very much wanted to get a manual transmission, and was glad I did. Shifting with the left hand is a bit odd, but you get used to it. For several days I’d whack the door as I reached out with my right hand for the nonexistent shifter over there. If you have little/no experience with sticks here, you may not want to try this; if you are comfortable with one, though, I recommend it.[/li][li]Roundabouts are great - I wish we had more here. (There’s one, that I’m aware of, in Los Angeles County - it’s in Long Beach, and is unambiguously referred to simply as “the traffic circle”.)[/li][li]I heartily second dangermom’s advice about the benefits of having one person drive and somebody else navigate.[/li][li]Never, in a week or so, did I end up on the wrong side of the road.[/li][li]Once, towards the end of the trip (curiously), I absently walked up to the car and actually sat down in the passenger seat before realizing my error.[/li][li]I immediately re-adjusted to driving at home upon arrival, even though I feared that it would take some time. (I drove our pick-up vehicle home from the airport, and it felt 100% normal.)[/li][/ul]There were many highlights to that trip, and the driving experience was definitely one of them.
