Right or left driving?

Mossy Monk

WooPeeA wrote: »

What if UK decided to move into right driving system??

The UK and change?

LOL

vektarman

Japan is the only country to change from driving on the right to driving on the left side of the road.

forestfruits

why change? surely thats just a whole lot of hassle

slade_x

Captain Slow IRL wrote: »

I wanna drive on the right.

Nuff said!

Then whats stopping you, i dont remember seeing anything in the rules of the road that you have to drive on the left:rolleyes:

stevecrow74

doesnt bother me... i let the chauffeur do all the driving....:D:D














and by chauffeur, i mean all my friends who have cars :D:D:D:D:D;)

Xavi6

Change is good. Maybe we should phase it in gradually or do some sort of trial run. Try it with cars first then if that works we can then include trucks, buses etc.

stevecrow74

Xavi6 wrote: »

Change is good. Maybe we should phase it in gradually or do some sort of trial run. Try it with cars first then if that works we can then include trucks, buses etc.

WHAT.. have the cars drivin on the right and trucks and buses on the left.... i dont think the A&E services will be too happy with that :eek:

Xavi6

Can't believe you thought I was being serious.

anniehoo

How does the whole change work though? Is it decided " ok monday week everyone drives rhs alright?"...what happens if you havent listened to the news in a week or were on hols for a fortnight...what a mess! And..for the amount of times you may drive abroad (poss twice ever) what the hell is the point?

Red cow roundabout would be classic though...

Trial me thinks for a day...f*ck everyone up

Overheal

GrumPy wrote: »

Driving on the right sounds like a better idea to me anyway.
Would make traveling/possibly living abroad less daunting.

Standardisms are often usful.

It is a word

if I had my way everyone would drive on the right side of the road, use 240v outlets (its more efficient), the metric system and have roundabou- oh my god ive been converted :eek:

linn

when you're driving on the right side of the road and drive past a sign or a banner or something you have to read it backwards.

c - 13

I've driven on both left (Ireland) and Right (Bahrain), and to be honest I dont feel that theres a whole lot of difference between the two from a safety perspective.

There's no real reason to change other than to be in the majority of countries that drive on the right.

It would cost the country Millons to redo all the signs around the country, road marking would all have to be re-painted, RSA campaigns etc. Would be nightmarish for the first few months.

It may have dropped the road fatalaties in Sweden but I can see it increasing here if they make that change. Common sense dictates that when unsure, slow down and think a bit more about your driving. Unfortunately common sense and the Irish driver dont go hand in hand at the best of times.

Sherifu

c - 13 wrote: »

I've driven on both left (Ireland) and Right (Bahrain), and to be honest I dont feel that theres a whole lot of difference between the two from a safety perspective.

There's no real reason to change other than to be in the majority of countries that drive on the right.

I tend to agree. In any case if it were changed, we will adapt.

Sam Vimes

anniehoo wrote: »

How does the whole change work though? Is it decided " ok monday week everyone drives rhs alright?"...what happens if you havent listened to the news in a week or were on hols for a fortnight...what a mess!

Sweden had a 3 year national campaign to prepare everyone

biko

WooPeeA wrote: »

Interesting text from wiki about changes in Sweden:



First hours of changes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Sweden1967.jpg

Another link http://www.volvoclub.org.uk/history/driving_on_right.shtml

Wibbs

As robinph pointed out it's napoleon's fault. Before him, armies, men on foot or horse, carts chariots all the way back to the Romans and beyond were like us and went on the left.

I've driven both and I prefer the steering wheel on the right. As most are right handed, it makes sense to keep the hand with more fine control on the steering wheel while changing gear. If you look at early Ferraris and a lot of the other sporty stuff, the race cars were right hand drive and the grand tourers were left hand drive.

Steve_o

Wibbs wrote: »

As robinph pointed out it's napoleon's fault. Before him, armies, men on foot or horse, carts chariots all the way back to the Romans and beyond were like us and went on the left.

I've driven both and I prefer the steering wheel on the right. As most are right handed, it makes sense to keep the hand with more fine control on the steering wheel while changing gear. If you look at early Ferraris and a lot of the other sporty stuff, the race cars were right hand drive and the grand tourers were left hand drive.

I agree, I drove a car in France once and found controlling the wheel with my left arm while shifting gears with my right was dodgy... Driving on the left ftw!

robinph

It's Frances fault

oneweb

So long as there's a transition period of six months where both sides of the road can be used so everyone can get used to the idea at their own pace, where's the problem??.

Alun

http://www.brianlucas.ca/roadside/

All you could ever want to know on the subject, and a lot more besides.

fjon

Believe it or not, one third of the world drives on the left, the majority of these countries being ex British colonies. India is by far the biggest country, and accounts for a large chunk of the world's population.
4 EU countries drive on the left: UK, Ireland, Malta and Cyprus. There is one road in Paris where traffic drives on the left for 350m, and there are a few other such anomalies throughout a number of right-hand driving countries.

I'm sure the Napoleon story has been mentioned as to why we do this, and what the origin of it was in the first place.
There is one benefit to driving on the left which has been alluded to in this thread: The majority (90%) of the world is right-handed. Driving a RHD car manual car means that when changing gears your dominant right hand is on the steering wheel.

There are quite a few borders where one must change from Right to Left. A large number of these are in Africa and traffic at most isn't too busy.
China is the only modern country I believe which has both RHD and LHD. The border between Mainland China and Hong Kong (as well as the smaller borders with Macau) switches from right to left.

As for Ireland ever moving to the right, I can't see it ever happening.
I RHD cars were completely eliminated the automobile industry would save billions, but if one tiny country like Ireland made the change the savings would be miniscule. On the other hand, the amount of money spent by the Irish government to accomplish this would be enormous.

Explosive_Cornflake

fjon wrote: »

Believe it or not, one third of the world drives on the left, the majority of these countries being ex British colonies. India is by far the biggest country, and accounts for a large chunk of the world's population.

Bangladesh, Australia and Japan are a few more that I know of also.

Alun

fjon wrote: »

Believe it or not, one third of the world drives on the left, ...

Well , that depends on how you measure it, really, doesn't it. Whilst there are far more countries (for some definition of 'country') that drive on the left than most people realise, and some of those countries are quite populous (India, Bangladesh, Indonesia etc.) that doesn't necessarily translate into an equivalent number of drivers or cars.

If you do it by 'country', then a lot of these are tiny island states that only just about manage to have anything you could realistically call a road, and even then the side you drive on is pretty academic.

According to the link I gave above, it's approximately 1/3 of the world (by population) that (potentially) drives on the left, but I'm guessing that only a tiny fraction of the 1 billion or so Indians, for example, actually possesses a motor vehicle of any sort.

robinph

One of the links gave it as a third population wise, but at 25% by amount of roads which is probably about as close to figureing it out based on actuall number of drivers as you can get although population density compared to amount of road surface in each country would effect that as well.

It's defiantely not just the UK and Ireland plus a couple of other small islands as a lot of people seem to think though.

Guy:Incognito

conzymaher wrote: »

But think of the savings you would make on cars if they didnt have to make lefty version for us stubborn bastards

How much pubblic money (remind us of where that comes from again) would it cost to change the whole country over?

WooPeeA

fjon wrote: »

Believe it or not, one third of the world drives on the left, the majority of these countries being ex British colonies.

And most of them are third world countries.

luckat

It would make it possible to buy much cheaper cars - lots more cars are made with right-hand drive than with left-hand drive.

But I don't see how we could do it if Northern Ireland were still driving on the left - too confusing to cross a border and suddenly have to change to the other side.

It would be much safer if *all* of Europe drove on the same side of the road, of course.

marco murphy

Stupid idea. Keep it how it is.

xOxSinéadxOx

Poblachtach wrote: »

Stupid idea. Keep it how it is.

+1

why are we even having this conversation?

twanda

IMO there are too many cars on the road now, to introduce a change like that. Would have been better to do it years ago, when the roads weren't so packed.