Martin Underwood:
If we'd done it several decades ago, it would have been feasible, but
nowadays it's not a realistic option. What a shame that The World didn't
agree right from the outset of the motor car to drive on the same side of
the road ...

Well, at least there are no longer any countries where it varies from one
part of the country to another.

It's always intrigued me that America chose to drive on the right,
given the large number of British people who settled there. No doubt
the number of immigrants from other European countries swayed the
argument.

On the contrary, it descends from differences in the way horses were used.

Which countries still drive on the left?

- UK/Ireland, obviously
- Channel Islands
- Australia
- Malta
- Gibraltar? Or does that drive on the left like Spain?
- Japan (I wonder why)

What about former British colonies like India?

All of the above except Gibraltar. Most places that drive on the left
are around the Indian Ocean; the exceptions, like Japan and Britain,
are island countries.
--
Mark Brader, Toronto | "Pleasant dreams!"
| "I'll dream of Canada." -- THE SUSPECT

My text in this article is in the public domain.

Martin Underwood:
The main difficulties [driving in America] came with adapting to things
that weren't just a lateral inversion ...

- lack of a stop or give-way line across the road where my minor road meets
a major road...
- coupled with the previous problem, pedestrian crossings consist of
two very prominent white lines across the road ... where a crossing
was close to a junction, I tended to stop at the crossing (even when
there were no pedestrians) thinking it was the junction stop line.

Good, because that's the correct thing to do. If the crosswalk is set
back far enough that you can't see the traffic on the other street --
which is unlikely -- then you're supposed to draw forward slowly after
stopping until you can.
--
Mark Brader, Toronto "These Millennia are like buses."
--Arwel Parry

"Michael Bell" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Martin Underwood wrote:
"Niklas Karlsson" wrote in message
...
Mark Brader wrote on Sun, 09 Jan 2005 04:44:21 -0000:
John Rowland:
Nearly all London squares have a clockwise one-way system, even
though
when
all of the roads in and out of the square are one-way, an
anti-clockwise
one-way system is superior (because drivers have better visibility
when
curving to the left). ...

Perhaps this was done in preparation for a changeover to driving on
the
right. After all, now that Britain is part of the EU...

Sweden had left-hand driving until September 3, 1967.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagen_H

The costs of doing this in the UK today would be prohibitive, both to
highway departments and to private individuals: every road junction would
need to have its white lines repainted on the other side; motorway
junctions and roundabouts would need their entry and exit roads
re-aligning (assuming that entry and exit roads are curved differently -
maybe this isn't the case); every car would need to scrapped and
replaced
with an LHD car.

I remember calculating at the time that the Swedish change-over cost 2
week's
GNP. That's an awful lot of money. And for what? Junction 8 on the M1 was
designed "wrong way round" in Mrs Castle's time to test the idea of
designing
junctions so that they could be changed over to right-hand drive, but the
experiment was never repeated.

Michael Bell

Junction 8 Nahh, The guys in the drawing office got it on the photocopier
the wrong away around,
and that's the story they put about, to cover up the stuff up :-)

peter

"Mark Brader" wrote in message
...

Well, at least there are no longer any countries where
it varies from one part of the country to another.

You've never been down Savoy Court near Aldwych, then.

--
John Rowland - Spamtrapped
Transport Plans for the London Area, updated 2001
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acro...69/tpftla.html
A man's vehicle is a symbol of his manhood.
That's why my vehicle's the Piccadilly Line -
It's the size of a county and it comes every two and a half minutes

Mark Brader:
Well, at least there are no longer any countries where
it varies from one part of the country to another.

John Rowland:
You've never been down Savoy Court near Aldwych, then.

Well, not in a car. But isn't it private property? That doesn't count.
--
Mark Brader, Toronto "You are not the customer,
you are the product."

In article , John Rowland
wrote:
"Michael Bell" wrote in message
...

Junction 8 on the M1 was designed "wrong way round"
in Mrs Castle's time to test the idea of designing junctions
so that they could be changed over to right-hand drive,
but the experiment was never repeated.

In what way was it designed the wrong way round? Just wrong gradients and
curvatures?
[snip]

It is a normal "trumpet" interchange where a non-motorway road joins a
motorway. Where any road crosses another, driving on either side of the
road, before the non-motorway road crosses the motorway, there are two slip
roads which can be filled in simply. But when the non-motorway road
has crossed the motorway, its two carriageways are the wrong way round
to join onto the motorway. In a normal British trumpet interchange the
left carriageway turns 270° left and under itself to join onto the motorway
and the lane coming off the motorway turns off the motorway well before
the junction and makes a wide sweep round. In the case of this interchange,
when you come off the motorway, you first pass under the bridge and then make
a sharp turn left. It's a route I do about once a month, and it is easy to
see you might try to get round too fast.

Michael Bell

Normal British Left-hand layout :-

/--------------\
/ \
/ \
/ /----\ \
/ / \ \
/ | \ |
/ | | |
/ \ | |
/ \ | |
--------------------------------| |-----------------------------------
Motorway Motorway
--------------------------------| |----------------------------------
\ | | /
\ | | /
\ | | /
\ | | /
\ | | /
\ | | /
\ | | /
\ | | /
\ | | /
| | /
| | /
| | /
| |
| |


Far from scale, but I hope you get the idea.

--

On 09 Jan 2005 16:21:31 GMT, Niklas Karlsson wrote:

Martin Underwood wrote on Sun, 9 Jan 2005 15:33:23 -0000:
"Niklas Karlsson" wrote in message
...
Mark Brader wrote on Sun, 09 Jan 2005 04:44:21 -0000:
Perhaps this was done in preparation for a changeover to driving on the
right. After all, now that Britain is part of the EU...

Sweden had left-hand driving until September 3, 1967.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagen_H

The costs of doing this in the UK today would be prohibitive, both to
highway departments and to private individuals:
[snip]
Oh, I have no doubt. I expect it would be prohibitive in Sweden as well,
had the switchover been postponed until today. I was mostly just
stirring the pot and adding a data point. :-)

It is probably this last point that is the biggest problem: in Sweden, "most
cars were LHD imports" according to the Wikipedia article (what about all
the home-produced Volvos?)

And Saabs? (Got to stick up for my hometown...) I don't know if the
statement is accurate, but in general I suspect at least a good-sized
share were LHD imports.


I've often seen it said that most cars in Sweden were already left
hand drive, but haven't seen any really plausible reason why. The
argument about imports isn't very convincing: if these imports came
from elsewhere in continental Europe, surely most of them would have
been cars that were also made in right hand drive form for the British
Isles.

Incidentally the Wikipedia entry is at variance with other accounts
that I have read when it comes to buses: apparently most buses in
Sweden were just replaced when the changeover took place and only a
few were converted

Martin

Michael Bell wrote:
In article , John Rowland
wrote:
"Michael Bell" wrote in
message ...

Junction 8 on the M1 was designed "wrong way round"
in Mrs Castle's time to test the idea of designing junctions
so that they could be changed over to right-hand drive,
but the experiment was never repeated.

In what way was it designed the wrong way round? Just wrong
gradients and curvatures?
[snip]

It is a normal "trumpet" interchange where a non-motorway road
joins a motorway. Where any road crosses another, driving on either
side of the road, before the non-motorway road crosses the
motorway, there are two slip roads which can be filled in simply.
But when the non-motorway road has crossed the motorway, its two
carriageways are the wrong way round to join onto the motorway.
In a normal British trumpet interchange the left carriageway turns
270° left and under itself to join onto the motorway and the lane
coming off the motorway turns off the motorway well before the
junction and makes a wide sweep round. In the case of this
interchange, when you come off the motorway, you first pass under
the bridge and then make a sharp turn left. It's a route I do about
once a month, and it is easy to see you might try to get round too
fast.

Michael Bell

Normal British Left-hand layout :-

[garbled diagram snipped]

Far from scale, but I hope you get the idea.

Not sure how you constructed that, but the lines are all over the place
on my screen. If you're going to post diagrams like this, please use a
fixed-width font like Courier New when drawing them and avoid using
tabs. Even if people don't normally used a fixed-width font, they can
switch to one to see the diagram, and it will look right. I think you
meant something like this (view in fixed width font):


/----------\
/ \
/ /----\ \
/ / \ \
/ | \ |
/ | | |
/ \ | |
/ \ | |
--------------------| |---------------
Motorway | | Motorway
--------------------| |---------------
\ | | /
\ | | /
\ | | /
\ | | /
\ | | /
\ | | /
\ | | /
\ | | /
\ | | /
\ | | /
\| |/
| |

The actual junction 8 on M1 is a mirror image of that.
See http://www.learn-it.net/images/hemelm8.gif
It is certainly not unique. J.7 of M4 is similar. It seems more
likely that land use and contours determined the design.

--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

On Sun, 09 Jan 2005 17:21:07 GMT, "Richard J."
wrote:


That's because the rule was changed some years ago. Before then
"priorité à droite" used to apply to roundabouts, giving joining traffic
the priority.

As we still do in many places in Spain. It's rule 91 of the Spanish
Highway Code (yes, we do have one!)

Give way to the right
======================

The right of way is determined by signs, and in their absence, give
way to vehicles coming from your right, except:

Those on a metalled road have priority over those on an unmade road.

Vehicles which travel on rails always have priority over all other
users.

At roundabouts, vehicles already on the roundabout have priority
over those entering it.

Vehicles already on a motorway have priority over those joining it.


The ballet dance at unsignposted crossroads cannot be explained in
words. A diagram is at.

http://costablancaexpats.net/holding/rule91.jpg



--
Bill Hayles

http://billnot.com

In article , Tim wrote:
With a LHD car I still position myself on the right half of
the carriageway and end up with the bulk of the car: in the
kerb, scraping a wall or occupying both lanes of a dual
carriageway

I'm glad it's not just me that has this problem. This, and the
abysmal road signing (as compared with the UK) has made me give
up hiring cars when I visit the USA. Fortunately I've never
done worse than kerbing the tyres, sorry tires g

--
Tony Bryer