why do they drive on the opposite side of the road?
My first exposure to “the other side of the road” was when I traveled to London the summer after graduating high school. It was weird. It still is weird to me…like is it safer? Is it more efficient? Is it random?
Is it weird/ignorant to even ask this question? Are people from the United States of America driving on the wrong side of the road?
So I have always wondered…who did this? When? Most importantly…why?!?
For starters…which countries drive on which side of the road?
So it is weird, surely, to drive on the left. But it is not *that* weird. A substantial amount of countries are set up that way.
But how/when/why did this start?
Rewind to the Romans…
Ancient Greek, Egyptian, and Roman troops kept to the left when marching.[7] In 1998, archaeologists found a well-preserved double track leading to a Roman quarry near Swindon, in southern England. The grooves in the road on the left side (viewed facing down the track away from the quarry) were much deeper than those on the right side, suggesting LHT, at least at this location, since carts would exit the quarry heavily loaded, and enter it empty.[8] — Wiki
More history…
In the late 1700s, traffic in the United States was RHT based on teamsters’ use of large freight wagons pulled by several pairs of horses. The wagons had no driver’s seat, so the (typically right-handed) postilion held his whip in his right hand and thus sat on the left rear horse. Seated on the left, the driver preferred that other wagons pass him on the left so that he could be sure to keep clear of the wheels of oncoming wagons.[10]
But then things changed in Europe…
Influential in Europe was the 1920 Paris Convention, which advised driving on the right-hand side of the road, in order to harmonise traffic across a continent with many borders. This was despite the fact that left-hand traffic was still widespread: in 1915 for example, LHT was introduced everywhere in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.[14] However, three years later the Empire was split up into several countries, and they all changed eventually to RHT, notably including when Nazi Germany introduced RHT with almost immediate effect in Czechoslovakia in 1938–39.[15]
And UK even thought of switching…
In the late 1960s, the UK Department for Transport considered switching to RHT, but declared it unsafe and too costly for such a built-up nation.[21] Road building standards, for motorways in particular, allow asymmetrically designed road junctions, where merge and diverge lanes differ in length.[22]
But they didn’t (largely because of sunk costs).
So what is safer?
In one study, researchers concluded that left-hand traffic may be safer for elderly drivers,[43] since humans are more commonly right-eye dominant than left-eye dominant.[44] Comparing accident statistics between countries operating either LHT or RHT, Leeming concluded that LHT is superior.[45] However, Watson has criticised the small sample size and dismisses the notion.[3]
Well now you and I know…
