I issue the same proviso as I did with my other post. I am a new guy here, and this may well have been answered exhaustively in the past. If so, please disregard and ridicule me accordingly.
But I pose this: Here, our steering wheel is on the left, but we drive on the right side of the road. In Britain, the wheel’s on the right, and they drive on the left. Why? Would it not be safer and a bit more convenient to change either the roadside on which we drive or the steering wheel placement, to come up with right-right or left-left?
Let’s take right-right for example. Steering wheel is on the right, and you drive on the right side of the road. Now, when you get into and out of your car as the driver, you do so from the curb, a bit safer than going to the other side, closer to traffic.
I would also tend to believe that a great many head-on collisions are not completely head-on, but involve just the front left corners of the cars meeting. Currently, that’s driver’s-side-to-driver’s-side. It would seem much less deadly to have the driver’s sides of passing vehicles as far away from their potential point of impact as can be.
The steering wheel is put on the left in the U.S. so you can see oncoming traffice better, especially if you’re behind another car. If it were on the right, it would be considerably more dangerous to pass. Also, you’d probably drift over the center line if you weren’t paying attention, whereas in the current system, you drift away from oncoming traffic.
“East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.” – Marx
My first car was an International Scout mail truck with right hand drive. The thing would barely do 55 flat out. It was impossible to pass anything (even a lawnmower) because you had to pull WAY out into oncoming just to see.
Secondly, it made the front passenger very nervous because they were within a few feet of oncoming and NOT in control. I made somebody else drive it once (uhhh, I was sick) and it freaked me out. Trust me, left steering, right side of the road is the way it should be.
Well, that’s part of the point, you see. If you’re the one driving (i.e., responsible for the actions of your vehicle), you should be the one most likely to be injured or killed by your own actions, not your innocent passenger.
On top of the obvious sight-line benefits ably explained by the previous posters, of course.
…but when you get blue, and you’ve lost all your dreams, there’s nothing like a campfire and a can of beans!
Until recently, most cars imported into Japan was LHD (left hand drive), presumably to distinguish them from domestic cars. My father used to have one and I drove it a few times. It definitely less convenient than RHD cars, aside from the obvious inconveniences at toll booths and drive-throughs.
First of all, in most roads you want to drive a couple of feet away from the centerline. If the driver is on the far side from the centerline it is very difficult to judge the distance. I ende up driving unnecessarily far from the centerline and close to the edge of the road. My father ended up driving too close to the centerline until one day he went too far and collided with an oncoming car.
Then there are the traffic lights. (I’ll switch right/left from here to make it easier for Americans to visualize) Say you’re waiting to turn left at a traffic light, waiting for the straight traffic to clear, while another car coming in the opposite direction is doing the same. If you’re sitting on the left side you can easily see the oncoming straight traffic. If you’re on the right side, the car waiting on the other side blocks your view of the oncoming straight traffic.
Another important consideration is tight turns with poor visibility. If you’re driving on the right side, left turns are a no problem - you can see pretty far ahead. On a right turn though, if your’re sitting ont he right side of the car, the blind spot head of the curve is huge. If there’s a car stalled just ahead in the curve, you may not notice it in time. If you’re sitting on the left side, you can see much farther ahead.
Also, as someone else mentioned, it was very scary to sit on the passenger seat of the car - to be so close to oncoming traffic and have no control of the car.
In fact, the only advantage to having the driver’s seat on the ‘wrong’ side is that it’s easier to parallel-park. But there are zero advantages during normal driving.
Here’s my SWAG.
A number of right/left traditions originated because men needed their right/sword arm available for defense.
Carts/wagons were driven from the right so the sword arm was available to slash bad guys and when so equipped, to pull the brake lever. It took a lot of strength to pull that lever.
Whether they were driven on the right or left side of a road when meeting another wagon, I don’t know.
The problem with that mode when applied to horseless carriages was that it was difficult for right handed people (which the majority of us are) to shift gears and handle chokes and so forth with our left hands, so the Americans moved the steering mechanism to the left to free up the right arm for those functions. The English being much more bound by tradition left it on the right.
Except, of course, tanstaafl, Keith was asking why the steering wheel was on the opposite side of the car from the curb, not why half the world drives on one side, half on the other.
I can think of one example of intentionally having the driver on the left and driving on the left, open pit mines.
The company I worked for switched to left side of the road driving for tire wear and safety. The tires on the large mine trucks are saved because the driver can better see the edge of the road and avoid debris. We spend many millions a year on tires so that’s no small savings.
With the trucks driving on the left there is a better chance drivers might survive a head on collision as it’s typically the right sides that hit. Keep in mind these are trucks that hold three hundred tons of rocks. There has been a head on collision and it can only be described as cataclysmic.
Which was answered in the article I linked to. To quote…
Which pretty much explains why the driver sits on the left and drives on the right. Since the first cars were modeled after carriages they also put their controls on the left and continued to drive on the right. At some point the “we’ve always done it that way” factor takes over.
This OP has been bugging me ever since I started to drive. I was never able to figure out the advantage of the way it has been done, and I always thought that right-right or left-left would be better. Many thanks to you all for your clear explanations.
I think it’s pretty obvious why it is that way (and I don’t think it’s just tradition as Tanstaafl asserts). I think it would be a lot harder to stay in your lane and avoid driving into oncoming traffic if you were sitting on the curb-side.
In addition to parallel parking, there are a few other benefits to driving a right-hand drive car on the right side of the road. It makes it possible to put things into and take things out of mailboxes without getting out of the car, which is why <s>mailmen</s> letter carriers drive postal vehicles so equipped. And wouldn’t it be great to drive up to a newspaper machine and pull a paper out while still behind the wheel?
Of course, the negatives far outweigh the positives.
I am willing to wholeheartedly agree that visibility of oncoming traffic is the major issue here. I do not, however, see why it would be any more difficult to stay in your lane while driving. I don’t have much trouble avoiding the fog line on the side of the road, way over yonder there on the right.
Keith, the problem is not staying inside the lane. The problem is driving as close to and parallel to but not beyond the centerline. Obviously there is no problem in freeways with lane markings on both sides, and you just run along the middle of the lane. However, on single lane roads you’re expected to drive as far from the curb as possible without hitting the oncoming traffic. Otherwise there is a real danger of hitting pedestrians and people getting out of parallel-parked cars.
By the way, I presume a “single lane” road in the US is a road with one lane for each direction? In crowded countries like Japan, many residential roads have something like 1.5 lanes total, so if there is an oncoming traffic, you find a particularly wide spot (e.g. someone’s driveway, or at least a space in between lampposts), edge into it and wait. Imagine doing that with the steering wheel on the wrong side…