Driving on the Right

Of course I was trepidatious before driving on the wrong side of the road for the first time. I was secretly thinking that Thrifty were mad to let me hire a car for 40 days. But when I got behind the wheel of my Toyota Corolla at the start of my epic road-trip across the US and Canada, the difficulty was not what I expected.

Keeping to the right turned out to be the easiest change. I'd prepared a few "Keep Right" sticky notes for the inside of the car to remind me, but they weren't needed. My bigger problem was that being in a left hand drive car, I had to re-learn where to position the car in the lane. If I didn't concentrate, I'd drift over to the right of the lane as if I was on the right side of the car. Being in dense traffic in downtown Vancouver, it took all my focus to keep in the narrow lane, especially as we wound around curves and up hills.

The next problem was roundabouts. Luckily for me, they are very rare in North America, but it only takes one to destroy a car. Without thinking, the first couple I found, I was concentrating so hard on keeping right and travelling anticlockwise around the circle that I completely forget to look left for any traffic. It was only luck that nobody was around.

I was also caught out a few times when I had to reverse around corners, or into main roads. I'm a naturally fast reverser, and without consciously thinking, several times I scarily found myself reversed onto the wrong side of the road, facing oncoming traffic. After those episodes I knew to be cautious about reversing, and deliberately slowed myself down, to give myself time to envisage where I should go.

And finally, having the indicator stalk, gear stick and handbrake on my right instead of the left took some more brainpower to adapt to. For the first twenty times I tried to indicate, my wipers were turned on. But nobody died.