Royjwood,
I can’t quite see what you are asking about regardind the Chunnel. You drive on to the shuttle carraiges of the train,stay in your car and then drive off at the other end. Each double-deck carraige holds twelve cars and they are parked in a single line on each deck. So nowhere does “switching” come into it. As I said before it is just like a sea-going car ferry.
Read this link:
NukeMan,
Actually, I was very much correct., thank you. Your misunderstanding is not the same as me being wrong. The statement was in reference to vehicles on your distant or opposite side of the vehicle as you are seated, it makes absolutely no reference to which side of the road you care to drive. Try reading before you type.
To prove this statement, though, try this:
Hop in your vehicle of choice.
Drive at what ever speed you so desire.
Then check out the objects on the opposite side of your vehicle, you are automatically giving them much more clearance than is necessary. Why?
The reason is that it is more difficult to judge the lateral distance of an object that is 160cms away from you than it is to for an onject that is usually no more than 50cms away.
As previously mentioned by myself, (TRY PREVIEW) neither (left nor right drive) is actually any more or less difficult to drive as long as the driver is closest to oncoming traffic. But it can most certainly take a little bit of getting used to.
The key is what any one person is used to. Also, as I previously mentioned, Americans are indeed luckier than the brits, in that when we visit our neighbours, we do not have to change the side on which we drive.
Having to drive both left and right on a regualr basis would most certainly drive me insane.
I have been driving for many years, and only recently switched to driving on the left. I have experienced no serious difficulties other than retraining my body to think of the road in an opposite manner than before. I still reach for the seatbelt on my right side, even though it is now on my left side. I still look for the rearview mirror on my right side, even though it is obviously on the left. I still want to turn to my right while backing, even though that makes it extremely diificult to back up.
I must admit that it was a little scary at first, but with time my mind has actually converted to thinking that I am supposed to be on the left side of the road. Which scares me even more for when I finally return home.
Now as for the two accent question. I suppose I could be wrong here. I have only travelled to England about four times total, and although I have worked closely with brits for many years, I am by noway an expert. However, in my own experience, it still stands that I have only experienced two major British accents, I am not including the Welsh, the Scotts, the Irish, or an other of the CommonWealth, the United Kingdom, or whatever.
America, unfortunately does have an incredible amount of variance in our own language, making it difficult for fellow Americans to be able to understand each other. I can imagine that y’all would find our accents (except for Boston) to be quite an annoyance to yourselves. Which is why the apparently failed attempt at humour went way over y’alls heads. I do prefer some of the British spellings, though not all.
Whatever, it was not intended as racism, but I will allow it to become so in an heated argument if you so wish.
Im sorry, royjwood, but I find you totally incomprehensible. You still give no reason why driving on the left is any harder than driving on the right, which you seem to claim we have ‘screwed up’.
Roy, not only are you being an annoying and insulting bigot, you are contributing to ignorance.
Do it somewhere else. I can assist in that if necessary.
As a Brit I think I should point out (off topic though it is) that we have several major accents and many variations of those.
Amongst the major ones would be:
Geordie (from the North East)
Yorkshire (from the North - just below the Geordies)
Lancastrian (roughly North West)
Manchester
Scouse (from Liverpool)
Brummy (Birmingham)
Cockney (London)
which is being superceded by Estuary English which is the accent of Essex (I think)
I suppose, since London is the capital and has around 8 or 9 million people then you will come across alot of these.
Though I have to say that the “Snotty accent” is not terribly common anymore.
I can’t say that I get particularly wound up by people saying we screwed everything up when it’s obviously just a pointless insult - but if people want to discuss it…
Cheers
Andrew D.
I won’t argue that it wouldn’t be somewhat more difficult for the UK, but I don’t think they are entirely different orders of magnitude. Stockholm is not a small city by any means, though certainly not the size of the London metro area. And a lot of Sweden’s population is heavily concentrated in the south, which has significant regions of high population density. Sweden provides an example which suggests that a modern industrialized nation can switch their convention if they want to badly enough. It was undoubtedly an enormous effort for Sweden to pull it off.
I wanted to add that another thing I remember from reading about this was that the instructions for drivers on open highways around the switch time was that at some time prior to the switch (15 min, or something like that), everybody was to pull off to the
side of the road, wait until the switch time had passed, and proceed on the opposite side of the road. I imagine every radio station in the country was doing non-stop public service announcements as the time approached.
They apparently managed it with no serious problems beyond monumental transient traffic snarls in the cities, which got sorted out. They didn’t have massive numbers of head-on collisions on their highways, which I find somewhat amazing - you had a whole country full of people having to change their habits, and full of vehicles whose wheels were suddenly on the wrong side.
Another thing I find curious is that poking around the web concerning this subject turns up articles suggesting that a major reason Sweden did this was that their auto industry was getting sick of manufacturing cars with steering wheels on one side for domestic sales, and on the other side for import. Don’t Volvo, Saab-Scania, etc STILL have to manufacture some number of right-hand drive cars for sale in places like the UK?
The Romans also drove on the left, like the Brits.
How do we know this? An archelogical survey relatively recently looked at the road coming out of a Roman mine. Looking towards the mine, the left side of the road, used by wagons, had no debris from the mine (iron filings, from hazy memory). The right side of the road had iron filings and debris which had fallen from the laden wagons, carting the ore away from the mine. Of course, perhaps it was regional to the site of the mine, but its the best evidence anyone has. Sorry, no cite - I read it in the Economist or somewhere.
In addition to Andrew D’s comment, I am from Cornwall. We and the other southern counties have another strain of accent again: not snotty or cockney. Let’s see if I can ‘examplise’ phonetically…
Ore-ite dair, moi burd?
All right there, my bird?
First attempt. By the way, it sometimes sounds a bit American.
Believe me, I am not trying to insult Sweden. I recently celebrated my two years anniversary of moving to Stockholm. However, Stockholm is really not that big a city. Even in central areas there is really not that much traffic - it is one of the things I noticed as soon as I moved here. IMHO the UK has many areas with traffic far worse than Stockholm.
You may not have read about it, but on Monday a report was released by the British Government saying that British transport is the worst in Europe, with the most congested roads and longest commuting times. You can read about it here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk_politics/newsid_1675000/1675185.stm
Other things mentioned in the article are that 25% of all main roads are congested for at least one hour a day (it is less than 10% in France and Germany) and that Britain is the most car-dominated country in Europe, with 87% of all road journeys made by car (only 12% by public transport).
It is reports like this that make me believe that you just cannot compare Sweden’s change from the left to the right with the idea of Britain changing. The infrastructure and culture are too different.
**
I may be wrong, but I believe that this is an EU ruling. There are companies in Britain that specialise with holidays in Europe to buy cars, the idea being that tax is lower and they have to be able to sell you a RHD model.
On an unrelated note, may I suggest that a certain member of this forum (who I believe to be from the US) buys this NTSC compatible videotape:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/6302287669/qid=1006850729/sr=8-7/ref=sr_8_67_7/103-3856165-7707011
It is called “Auf Wiedersehen Pet”. In it you will find quite strong and disntictive examples of the Geordie, Scouse and Brummie accents, none of which are Snotty or Cockney.
I grew up eighteen miles from Birmingham and was always thankful that I never picked up the accent (I personally do not like it, but others do). It is refreshing to know that I had nothing to worry about as the Brummie accent doesn’t exist.
You know, I think I’d really enjoy a little more of your wisdom on this issue, royjwooud. Whenever you’re ready…
Also, the night of the switch, which took place at four or five in the morning, only buses and taxis, apart from, of course, police and fire vehicles and such, were allowed to drive.
Wrong, and that’s the reason it went so smoothly. For some reason all cars in Sweden already had the steering wheel on the left side.
Wrong for the reason mentioned above. The only cars they made with the steering wheels on the right were made for export to countries with left side driving (and for the post office).
Supporting Floater’s post, I recollect reading a newspaper report of the Swedish changeover to driving on the right, where it was stated that the changeover would be easier because Swedish cars were left-hand drive. I remember wondering about the reason for this, thinking it might be to facilitate driving through Europe, but would present a problem for the locals.
to The Colonist,
I appreciate your response, it made me laugh quite a bit. The cockney is still my favourite, though. I think it might be because most of the cockney speakers that I deal with are somewhat rowdy to begin with. And their humour is great. Although I am from the Ohara clan, I seldom use my Irish accent, as it was lost man, many years ago, and only comes up when I want it to.
But back to the proper topic, though.
To RealityChuck
What do you know about why international nautical laws require passing on the right? Just out of curiousity, that is.
To NukeMan
Again read the posts prior to replying. I stated that neither left nor right is any more difficult than the other. The difficulty comes in trying to switch back and forth. That makes about three or four times now that I have said, so. All you have to do is read.
To Manhattan
My apologies to you, I have lived in the Australian area for quite some time now, and spend very much time with both Aussies and Brits together. None of the Britts here take any offense to the words Pom or Pommie. They actually seem to enjoy the friendly rivalry that we enjoy here. It could just be that Australia is such a wondeful place that every body is much more calm and “laid back” when “down under”. The best rivalry is with international sporting, not with America and Britain, but Australia and Britain. It is alot of fun when ever those two play each other.
Again, my apologies to you.
“We drive on the right or correct side, the bloody poms use the wrong side.
Now see, wasn’t that simple? They are wrong, and we are right.”
Royjwood. It is this statement that we are still trying to get justification for. You seemed to ignore it after you wrote it, instead deciding to go into a rant about how everything is OK as long as the driver is on the same side as the oncoming traffic. Seeing that in the UK the driver is on the same side as the oncoming traffic, we are all a trifle confused as to why the UK is still wrong.
Is it wrong simply because it isn’t what the US does?
Why should Britain change sides? Britain is an island. The roads don’t lead to another country where you suddenly have to swap sides (like Sweden was). As a self-contained entity everything works pretty much hunk-dory. There is a saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.
yes roy, I get your point but you also claim that Brits and other people who drive on the left have somehow screwed up driving, when actually there is no advantage to either method.
As for ‘poms’, I don’t consider it an insulting word, it is just a friendly joke, as in ‘frogs’ for the french. It is what you go on to talk about that is insulting.
For me, cricket matches between England and Australia are just painful. I just don’t find sports matches between unbalanced teams enjoyable to watch. (not just because I’m English)
NukeMan
I can understand, and again, my apologies.
As for cricket, I still have not learned to enjoy watching that one. Football and rugby (although the rules of rugby somehow elude me) are enjoyable, especially when it is an Aussie/Brit match. The rivalry, though very strong, is also very fun. You do not even have to enjoy the game, just listening to the rivalry is great enough.
The first line about screwing up stuff (Brits only though), was a misunderstood joke. But the response in the Pit, is pretty amusing.
And to Amanset,
I agree, to try to change sides at this point would be a disaster. If it works, keep it so. I can imagine that if anyone actually did suggest trying to change that they would be laughed off the island pretty quickly. I, too would be laughing.
However, traffic circles, are another thing altogether. My experience with them is not that they are difficult to navigate, only that they are dangerous, as it forces a more offensive driving stance and less defensive. I prefer STOP signs all around. Although for heavy traffic areas, the lights work well only when on a sensor, and not on a timer.
It was not a rant. The problem is people who choose to speak without reading the entire posts.
Anyway, when I go out to my car everyday, I climb in on the right side and drive on the left side of the road. It is now almost natural for me. But I will always be preferential to the American way, I think it has something to do with 4 July 1776.
Putting your preference of side of driving in a CAR down to something that happened 200 years ago (remember we are talkign about cars) just seems somewhat ludicrous.
Maybe I just don’t realise it, but my preference for driving on the left is really because driving on the left is a French idea - and they invaded us twice!
Note:
For furute reference, when you write things like “No Joke…” people will assume you are not joking.
Arse, obviously meant “right” there.
I don’t know if it’s true either, but IIRC that was the way Sweden did it. The reason it worked was because only the traffic that had changed sides was allowed to drive. I think they started with buses, then cabs, and then others in some order. That may be what the plan was in Nigeria.