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Old 01-23-2016, 02:05 AM   #1
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Driving in the UK

I've been in the Manchester area this last week and I'm heading home in an hour or two from Heathrow.

Been a long time since I rented a car in the UK but it made more sense on this trip because of the area of travel.

Quite nerve wracking to drive on the left - decades of driving on the right made it feel very weird. Even after several days of driving here, sitting on the right side of the car and driving on the left side of the road was a challenge.

Add in the ridiculously narrow roads, the roundabouts with unintelligible signs, and the many drivers doing their best Mario Andretti impersonation, and I'm just happy to get out of here in one piece.
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Old 01-23-2016, 02:42 AM   #2
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Old 01-23-2016, 02:43 AM   #3
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When we are in London next fall we aren't renting a car there cause just a few days--but will rent for a month in France driving from Paris down to Perigueux and all around that area.

Just getting a small Fiat or something...Glad it will be Doug doing all the driving! I haven't driven a stick shift in years!! But it is on the proper side of the road isn't it??

The other three we are going with will rent a bigger car so all 5 of us can fit in it to go certain areas...
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Old 01-23-2016, 05:17 AM   #4
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My brother, who has driven a few times on the left side of the road, says he keeps thinking, keep the passenger in the ditch.

I can only imagine how weird it would be. More the driving on the left, than driving a left handed vehicle.
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Old 01-23-2016, 06:02 AM   #5
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Hope you're not changing planes in DC.
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Old 01-23-2016, 06:41 AM   #6
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My only experience driving on the left was in New Zealand. After an all night flight, the last thing I needed was a traffic circle that went the wrong way going out of the airport. Welcome to New Zealand.
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Old 01-23-2016, 10:49 AM   #7
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I found that for me the switch to driving a manual transmission right side drive car on the LHS of the roads was mostly painless. I did find myself unintentionally turning on the wipers when I wanted to use the turn signals or vice versa. When I did finally get back home and back into my left side drive car, it took a while before I stopped flipping on the wipers to change lanes.
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Old 01-23-2016, 11:03 AM   #8
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I found that for me the switch to driving a manual transmission right side drive car on the LHS of the roads was mostly painless. I did find myself unintentionally turning on the wipers when I wanted to use the turn signals or vice versa. When I did finally get back home and back into my left side drive car, it took a while before I stopped flipping on the wipers to change lanes.
That happens to me just changing from driving our car to the truck, wipers on the right side in car and left in the truck because it has gear shift on the right (bench seat)

Robert you didn't say whether you had manual. I found the once we rented in England (our honeymoon in 1974) the shifting with left hand not bad especially when the shift pattern is the same, was just funny shifting higher towards me instead of away!

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Old 01-23-2016, 12:19 PM   #9
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Quite nerve wracking to drive on the left - decades of driving on the right made it feel very weird.
A few more days and it does actually start to feel normal. I've driven in the UK and, yes, some roads with hedges growing right to the road are twisty and blind, and St. Lucia, the only way to get from the local airport in the North to the international one in the South, is to rent a car and drive over the twisty mountain roads. Australia's the easiest country to drive on the wrong side of the road, especially in the great red center. New Zealand has a lot of very twisty narrow mountain roads. Those Kiwi's have a great sense of humor. Blasting down a twisty mountain road heading for a hairpin and see a speed limit sign, 100 kph.

Loved the Mercedes van. Almost went over to the dark side. However it was quite narrow. If I had one I'd want the one with a widened body. The ability to open up the rear doors was a nice feature. The lake is Lake Taupo.

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Old 01-23-2016, 01:04 PM   #10
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Try driving in Poland back in the early '90s before the Iron Curtain really came down. Few maps, fewer road signs. And what they did have were in Polish and Cyrillic to boot. Imagine that. I was in a traffic circle for ten minutes, I swear, laughing so hard as I didn't know where to get out of it. Fortunately, my aunt and uncle were with me so laughing at our situation became the stuff of later stories.
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Old 01-23-2016, 01:10 PM   #11
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I didn't mind the stick shift on the left, but the narrow roads in Ireland were a challenge. An RV (known there as a Caravans) "pushed" me to the left and I creased the rental car on the rock wall! Lucky for me that my travel agent convinced me to take the insurance. My fear was that if I had to make an emergency maneuver, instinct would take over & I would go the wrong way.
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Old 01-23-2016, 02:58 PM   #12
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Back in the US. 10 1/2 hours sitting next to a Sihk gentleman who started his trip in Delhi and apparently never bathes - but that's a whole other story.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim Bennett View Post
I can only imagine how weird it would be. More the driving on the left, than driving a left handed vehicle.
That part's true.

Quote:
Originally Posted by padlin View Post
Hope you're not changing planes in DC.
Nope, it was Heathrow to Dallas. Fortunate.

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Originally Posted by emers382 View Post
Robert you didn't say whether you had manual.
It was an automatic, although I had to pay a daily premium fee to get it. Figured I'd need to pay my undivided attention to the road and not add shifting to the mix.

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Originally Posted by Ron in BC View Post
A few more days and it does actually start to feel normal.
I imagine that's true Ron.
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Old 01-23-2016, 04:46 PM   #13
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driving on the wrong side

My suggestions having driven in UK, Australia, NZ:
get an automatic
get lots of insurance
look the way you would not expect to going into roundabouts
be very careful to go in proper lane after turns
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Old 01-23-2016, 06:24 PM   #14
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We rented a car and drove our way around Scotland for a month in 2007. The only reservations I had was navigating around some of the most amazing roundabouts I've ever seen. For the locals, it is an easy established routine, but although I'm very comfortable with the one or two lane roundabouts we encounter in BC, those three or four lane ones in the big cities were terrifying! Consequently, I just stayed out of those big cities.
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Old 01-23-2016, 06:37 PM   #15
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Well, at least in Poland do they call 'em traffic circles? Hands down scariest behind the wheel drive time I ever had was on a roundabout in the UK.
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Old 01-23-2016, 07:07 PM   #16
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Drove an RV in Australia and starting out in Sydney traffic was quite the experience. It took about two days to really get comfortable with it. Loren
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Old 01-25-2016, 04:46 PM   #17
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... will rent for a month in France driving from Paris down to Perigueux and all around that area.

Just getting a small Fiat or something...Glad it will be Doug doing all the driving! I haven't driven a stick shift in years!! But it is on the proper side of the road isn't it??
Yes, continental Europe drives on the right-hand side of the road just like North America, so there will be no "wrong side" issues... just language issues with navigation (not with basic road signs, which are wordless symbols everywhere).

Everyone I personally known who has driven in continental Europe has had no difficulty... but they're all driving enthusiasts so they're not typical.
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Old 01-25-2016, 05:05 PM   #18
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Well, at least in Poland do they call 'em traffic circles? Hands down scariest behind the wheel drive time I ever had was on a roundabout in the UK.
Not likely. Aside from the issue of both "circle" and "roundabout" being English words (not Polish), I believe that "roundabout" is the nearly universal English word for this type of intersection. We generally call them "traffic circles" here, but official use is shifting to "roundabout"... here, and in Ontario, British Columbia, Washington, Texas (at least Fort Worth)...

If you really mean "traffic circle", you may be thinking of an intersection which does not work quite the same way. From Wikipedia:
Quote:
The U.S. Department of Transportation adopted the term modern roundabout to distinguish those that require entering drivers to give way to others. This article follows that convention and refers to other types as traffic circles or rotaries. Many old traffic circles remain in the northeastern US.

U.S. Department of Transportation (2013). "Roundabouts: an Informational Guide"
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