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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I just had to share this site I found while looking for something else (Conestoga wagons--hi, stales). Two things surprised me: a goodly third of the world drives on the left. and Did the United States ever drive on the left?
Yes.
http://www.travel-library.com/general/driving/drive_which_side.html
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Thanks for that Jackie - some fascinating aspects. I now know I am in a larger minority than I thought.
I was driving in Sweden in the 70s, a few years after they changed over from left to right and it seemed to me that slip roads on motorways were tightening up in the wrong way in some places, and one way systems seemed to do illogical things at times, but I cannot work out a logical reason why that should be.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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slip roads on motorways were tightening up in the wrong way in some places, and one way systems seemed to do illogical things at times
Huh?
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Was that Britspeak? I didn't know that. Y'all should watch more British TV.
What's not clear here? Your 'Huh?' was less than explicit, but I'll try.
Slip Road - way on or off the motorway.
Motorway - very fast multi-lane highway with hard shoulders (mostly).
Tightening up - refers to the reducing radius of the bend in a slip road. Should ease up as you reach the part of the slip road where your speed increases. You can be in real trouble if it does the opposite or if it tightens too fast as you leave the motorway.
One way system - a section of road where, for reasons of traffic management, all traffic on the road moves in one direction. It is necessarily matched by a parallel section of road that may be a block away where traffic has to move in the opposite direction - otherwise no one gets home.
Illogical - describes something that appears to have no reason. The term was invented by a guy called Spock who wrote a book about bringing up Klingon children.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Your 'Huh?' was less than explicit
Because I felt completely at sea. I understood each word individually but none made sense up next to each other.
Your explanation was clarity itself. What you call a Slip Road we would call an On Ramp or an Off Ramp. That which you describe as a One Way System would either be a divided highway or, we have sometimes in cities or towns cases where a major road going through the town will have pairs of one way stretches. I would have thought that changing sides of the road wouldn't cause any problems. We have a One Way System in Ithaca on the main road through town and I couldn't imagine why anything about it, beyond some things that would require some lane repainting, would seem illogical if we were driving on the other side of the road. Similarly for the on/off ramps. It would have seemed that any speeding up in one direction would be mirrored by slowing down in the other.
But apparently I'm wrong. If you've experienced this in real life, I'll not doubt you.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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The one way systems in old cities that are not built on a grid pattern can be quite complex. They are put in place because the street concerned is too narrow to take the modern traffic density. I am sure I've seen something like this in Boston, Mass. Originally there would have been only the one major street, built for horse and carriage, running along that route in the city so if that street is made to take a one way traffic flow then the return flow has to use a variety of minor roads and if you miss the signs you could get lost. I don't think you could properly call it a divided highway, that sounds more like what we would call a dual carriageway - that is a major road with a central reservation.
Vive la difference!
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I had to laugh at your explanation, dxb....it was written seriously, but it tickled my funny bone! Especially the part about Spock's logic!
Once you explained what tighening up means when entering or leaving the motorway, I knew exactly what you meant. As Faldage said, our slip roads are called on and off ramps here in the states, and when I encounter a "short" off ramp, I am indeed in trouble, as I tend to exit the highway much faster than I should!
And I also know what you mean by the One Way Systems, where one way roads are sometimes a block apart. You are right....no one would get home without the counterpart a block away! We have them here in the states, usually in the older parts of cities, as you mentioned. I know there are many on the east coast, and also many as far southwest as Texas.
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old hand
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old hand
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There are several corners in St. John's which are maximally awkward to navigate. There are a couple of intersections where five or six streets meet at a funny angle and they've attempted to make it into a traffic circle, but with lights. I'm told that the patterns make more sense for drivers on the left side of the road, which is the way things were here up until a couple of years before Confederation with Canada (which occurred in 1949). And giving it some thought, and picturing the roads in question, it does make sense. I think with a grid system the side of the road on which we drive would be inconsequential, but anyone who's driven in St. John's knows that this city is the farthest thing possible from a grid system! 
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Jackie:
Thanks for that fascinating bit of information. Actually a great deal of information.
I had always wondered why the US drove on the right while the ostensible mother country did the opposite. Many many years ago we discussed road rules in our HS driving course. The teacher maintained that the first rule of the road was which side you would use. I maintained that it was the yield rule at an unmarked intersection.
But the website you provided said that the colonies changed over gradually to driving on the right. That just plain doesn't make sense to me. You would think that it was an all-or-nothing proposition. I cannot imagine meeting another wagon on a road and having a polite discussion as to whether to go right or left to pass the other vehicle. Just like walking on a sidewalk. I've been to Europe and to Australia, and though this is limited experience people on sidewalks keep to the right. It's so deeply ingrained as to be almost instinctive, I would imagine.
Driving on the left does directly benefit cyclists, I noticed. Almost everyone gets on and off a bicycle from the left side. In England and Ireland, when you get off the bike you have the bike between you and the traffic, while in the US you are standing further into the road than the bike is. Not quite as safe.
I remember very well my first day in Ireland on my bike trip there. I loaded up my bike and set off from Shannon up toward Limerick, keeping securely to the far left. This was after spending an ungodly number of hours awake. I had departed Denver in late morning, changed planes in NY and again at Heathrow, and it was early afternoon of the next day. I stopped for a red light and glanced to my right. I actually did wonder why the Irish setter in the car beside me was driving the car. Took about ten very confused seconds to realize the darned dog was in the passenger seat.
TEd
TEd
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old hand
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But the website you provided said that the colonies changed over gradually to driving on the right. That just plain doesn't make sense to me. You would think that it was an all-or-nothing proposition. I cannot imagine meeting another wagon on a road and having a polite discussion as to whether to go right or left to pass the other vehicle.
Maybe in the beginning, people mostly drove their wagons in the vicinity of their homes, and rarely ventured far away. Then it would be possible to have places where everyone drove on the right, and other places where everyone drove on the left, and possibly not much mixing of people and wagons among them.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Re: I am sure I've seen something like this in Boston, Mass
i think Boston MA is one of the hardest cities to drive in; many narrow, one way streets, with no clear way to back track, since the streets all run at different angle and were laid out by following a the path taken by a drunk cow. and then there are the Boston drives to contend with... easily as aggressive as NY drivers and as bad at driving as NJ drivers!
Salt Lake City has the reputation for being the easest city in US to drive in, when Joseph Smith (or was in Brigham Young?--not to sure of Utah/Morman history) laid the city out, all the streets were made wide enough for a horse and wagon to make a U turn. (or in modern terms, about 2 lanes in each direction, and room for parking on both sides of the street!)
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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were laid out by following the path taken by a drunk cow. ~ of troy
Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;
A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread
The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.
Excerpt from 'The Rolling English Road' by G.K. Chesterton
The Big Dig was underway when I was driving in Boston which complicated things still further. Several times I found myself undesignedly and irretrievably bound for Cambridge where I had to turn around, head back and try again!
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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The Big Dig was a major issue when we drove through Boston in 2001. Shambolic! But not as bad as ... oooh, Auckland City without the Big Dig or Sydney (with or without the Big Dig) or the East End of London (which seems to be a permanent Big Dig).
We don't seem to have any mental regearing problems with which side of the road to drive on. When you're in the US or Europe, it all just comes natural-loike to drive to the right.
The biggest problem (as someone above said) are the give way rules. It's panic stations in the US when you come up to a controlled intersection which doesn't have a "Right Turn On Red" sign. Can you or can't you? Quite often the car behind you will "remind" you that it's okay, but if you just chance it the odds are that a cop will be waiting somewhere just for li'l ol' moi.
A recent example of the give way rules confusion is that in Britain the de facto rule is that right gives way to left. Well actually, that ain't the formal rule, but it's the way everyone drives, and I've got used to it over the past 18 months. Back in the Zild last month, I had to remember that left gives way to right. Nearly had an accident, which drove the point home. But when I came back I had to remember the opposite all over again. Damn!
- Pfranz
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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in Britain the de facto rule is that right gives way to left.
Um--would that be right turns giving way to left turns? That would only make sense, since they'd be turning from the far lane(s), unless it was a one-way road in which case it wouldn't matter.
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In one state in Australia, oncoming traffic gives way to drivers turning right. I found that out the year I lived in Melbourne. People in South Australia (where I spent the first 3 weeks of that year) warned me that in Victoria, if I was waiting to turn right at an intersection, the oncoming traffic would wait for me to turn, as they were legally obliged to do so. I forgot that sometimes, but everyone was patient, possibly because our car had South Australia license plates on it. I wanted to hold up a sign saying "You don't know the half of it!"
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