"tim" wrote in message
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"Martin Underwood" wrote in message
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"Richard J." wrote in message
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Martin Underwood wrote:
"Niklas Karlsson" wrote in message
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Ever noticed those white oval plates with GB on them? Ever thought how
their owners managed to drive in LHD countries? The idea that you would
have to scrap all RHD cars if we changed the rule of the road is absurd.
Yes, there are some problems, and overtaking on narrow
single-carriageway roads without a passenger to help you is nasty , but
I've never had a problem on a motorway apart from paying at the péage
where the kiosk is on the British nearside.

If I had to drive in mainland Europe, I'd always hire a car locally and
wouldn't contemplate taking my own RHD car over there

Having done both, I find that sitting on the wrong side
of the car is far harder to get used to than positioning
myself on the wrong side of the road.

With my RHD car I just have to accept that I can't overtake
on single carriageway roads, but fortunately most journeys
nowadays are on motorways.

Even on a motorway you'd have to take your eyes off the road ahead and look
a long way off-axis to see the nearside (left-hand) mirror. To be really
sure, an over-the-shoulder check is probably advisable. This requires you to
anticipate the need to overtake further in advance to allow a bit of extra
distance from the car in front yo cover the time when you're not looking
straight ahead.

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 found when I drove in America that driving on the other side of the road
came a lot more easily than I was expecting: I simply reversed everything in
my brain.

The main difficulties came with adapting to things that weren't just a
lateral inversion but were differences between US and UK signing and road
marking:

- lack of amber light to warn that traffic lights were about to turn green

- appalling direction signing on non-highway (ie single-carriageway roads):
maybe I'm too used to the British standard of signposting where at almost
every junction the places and distances that can be reached in each
direction are shown, so you don't have to look out for small
white-on-pale-green road-name signs

- lack of a stop or give-way line across the road where my minor road meets
a major road; this was especially a problem where the minor road met the
major road on a bend: judging where to aim to stop was difficult

- coupled with the previous problem, pedestrian crossings consist of two
very prominent white lines across the road, between which the pedestrians
walk: 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

- four-way stop junctions: any junction which depends on the time (order) at
which cars arrived (instead of their relative position on the road) to
determine who has priority is pretty stupid because it's open to two people
having different ideas as to who has priority

- "disappearing lanes" on highways/freeways: if you're in the right-most
lane on the approach to a junction, you need to hop out into the next lane
or you'll often find yourself being directed off at the junction

- remembering that US speed limits are generally some 10 to 20 mph slower
than British ones would be for the same type of road

- not being afraid to overtake a car on the "wrong" side because he's decide
to travel slowly in a lane that's close to the central reservation


It was fun to watch Americans try to negotiate the few roundabouts
("rotaries", "traffic circles") that I encountered: they were bewildered
whereas I just said to myself "give way to traffic on my left on the
roundabout and think of the mirror image". The roundabout as you go onto
Cape Cod sticks in my mind! I got several funny looks from drivers who were
in the right-hand lane and indicating right when I overtook them on the
roundabout because I was in the left lane going straight ahead...


Positioning on the road was a problem on country lanes where there was no
kerb stone: occasionally I found that I'd drifted slightly onto the verge.

One thing I liked about US driving (certainly in rural Massachussets) was
the courtesy of other drivers, both to car drivers and to pedestrians: there
was more tendency to drivers on major roads to let ones on minor roads pull
out, and several times when I was on foot I had drivers stop to let me cross
the road even though I'd only stopped to sightsee and wasn't actually
planning to cross!

And I liked the idea of temporary speed limits outside schools etc: very
slow during arrival/departure times but realistic at all other times,
whereas we'd probably have a blanket 30 (or even 20) 24 hours a day.