PSA for those visiting Britain and renting a car

[LVSteve]

1) There are speed cameras everywhere. Some take instant measurements, others use Automatic Number Plate Reader (ANPR) technology to determine average speed.

2) ANPR is used for parking enforcement on public carparks and private property, too. This is typical at small hotels with very small carparks in any major town/city. Any infractions are sent to your rental company who will charge you a handling fee, too.

3) Even hotels with large carparks often charge for parking, and it can be $15/night.

4) Traffic light cameras are everywhere, and the amber cycle in the towns inside the 30 limit seem awful short to me, especially at 30mph in the wet.

5) There is a peculiar subset of drivers who don't like others using cruise control. I've come across this in the US once or twice, but I could guarantee at least one every freeway trip while I was there recently.

6) All passing is done on the right except on one-way streets or traffic is moving in queues. Cops have zero tolerance for "undertaking".

7) You are required to allow a minimum of 5 feet of space when passing cyclists. You may guess the results on a typical two-lane windy road with a lot of traffic.

8) The price of gas is such that folk driving at 50 mph on a 70 mph road is a thing. I nearly got caught out by a guy doing 45 mph.

9) Many of Britain's roads have not been maintained since I left 25 years ago. Inspection of some of the larger potholes revealed victims in small hatchbacks who couldn't get out.

10) This is REALLY important. The driver's door is on the right of the car.

 

[Breakaway500]

I could not drive 50 feet without heading back to the right side of the road.Too many years have permanently wired my brain that way.
Hell.. can't even drive a pre-1976 motorcycle that shifts on the right/brakes on the left. Just one half of my brain must work..

 

[fordson]

Thanks for the update. Wife and I will be visiting her relatives there this September (greater London area, Portsmouth, Oxford and Cambridge). She always does the driving, and I navigate.

 

[bigwheelzip]

We've been putting off a driving tour there for decades, only because youse drive on the wrong side.


Sent from my motorola one 5G using Tapatalk

 

[Kiwi cop]

True story. Just before our 2018 U.S. trip Karen said to me that she would be riding in the back behind me as she didn’t want to be sitting right alongside oncoming traffic. I told her to watch a couple of U.S. TV shows and confirm the steering wheel was on the right, not the passengers seat

When we got our U.S. PT Cruiser a couple of years ago it took her more than 6 months before she’d sit on the passenger's side front seat.

The first few days in Houston I gelt something was out of place. We had just got on the interstate to drive to San Antonio when I went to check the rear view mirror. I looked up and left as I have done all my driving life in Kiwiland and realised I was looking outside the car. That’s when I remembered the other internal mirror was on my right. After that I had no problems with looking behind me, but tee first time I was on a 4 lane freeway at 5 mph over the speed limit, looked behind and saw three 18 wheelers abreast, behind me and in the lane to either side, catching up fast I wished I had forgotten the centre mirror was there.

I got caught out a couple of times when I automatically moved left. Luckily nothing bad happened and I very quickly realised my mistake and corrected it. Once, a few days after I got home, I turned right out of a driveway onto a rural road and moved to the right hand side of the centreline. Again I quickly corrected myself.

Still, I learnt my lesson. When turning always concentrate on what you are doing and remember, as the driver you should be positioned close to the centreline, unless driving an imported car with the steering wheel on the wrong side for tue country.

All three of my personal cars (one we’ve owned for 15 years) have European/American controls with indicators on the left. The only “normal” one I drive is my patrol car, and next year I get a Euro made one with the controls on the “right” side for me.

 

[LoboGunLeather]

About 30 years ago I spent a couple of weeks in England. Lodging in Newmarket (Suffolk), touring much of the area around Norfolk in a rented automobile. Right-hand drive, of course, but that did nothing to overcome my decades of driving on the other side in the U.S. My first introduction to traffic circles, a challenging obstacle without the tasks involved with driving on the wrong side of the road.

Brits vary between relaxed and easy going to tightly wrapped, but few seem to have any tolerance for Yanks interrupting their usual traffic flows. I learned a few new hand gestures and shouted words of encouragement from those forced to tolerate my meager attempts to navigate the motorways, A-roads, and B-roads.

I'm not sure who needs better nerves; those who drive 60MPH in rural areas with trees on either side of the road, or those residing in the houses within 5 feet of those same roads. But some of those houses have been there for hundreds of years, so I doubt things will change very much simply because of automobile traffic.

Son was stationed at RAF Lakenheath, USAF duties included RAF Mildenhall. Our family ancestral home is in Bramerton (Norfolk) going back about 8 centuries, so a lot of places to see and people to meet. I enjoyed the experience more than most Brits seemed to find appropriate.

 

[hsguy]

Driving on the "wrong" side of the road can be a bit of a challenge. When I do I have a mantra, "keep left", or keep leeft in NZ. I find when I get home with a bit of jet lag I find the "keep left" still imbedded in my brain and it takes a day or two to sort it out.

 

[irish132]

Had a trip to Australia in 2011, there was a big learning curve driving there. First time I sat in the right side driver seat I felt like a new driver. Took a while to feel comfortable but after 3 weeks I was fine with it. On the flip side, once I got home it took about a week before I was able to turn into the correct lane without rethinking it constantly. Driving was different but totally worth the trip!

 

[oldbrownhat]

...But some of those houses have been there for hundreds of years, so I doubt things will change very much simply because of automobile traffic....

When Google maps and AI came on the scene to help people get around by giving route directions, they completely forgot the above, and as a result lorry (truck) drivers were being sent down narrow rural streets and taking bits off buildings whose upper storeys projected over the roadway. Very disconcerting trying to empty your chamber pot in the morning when there is a 3-ton Bedford lorry grazing the timber framing...

I spent a week visiting a recording engineer friend in Harleston, Norfolk many years ago. Loved it. I think I drove through Bramerton. You probably have some relatives buried in St. Peter's church there

 

[Old 44 Guy]

Steve, Some of my ancestors left England many years back. On sailing ships. Now I know why.. Just kidding.

 

[LoboGunLeather]

When Google maps and AI came on the scene to help people get around by giving route directions, they completely forgot the above, and as a result lorry (truck) drivers were being sent down narrow rural streets and taking bits off buildings whose upper storeys projected over the roadway. Very disconcerting trying to empty your chamber pot in the morning when there is a 3-ton Bedford lorry grazing the timber framing...

I spent a week visiting a recording engineer friend in Harleston, Norfolk many years ago. Loved it. I think I drove through Bramerton. You probably have some relatives buried in St. Peter's church there

I have been there. St. Peter's church is a 12th Century edifice of the Norman period. Most of the floor is taken up with burial markers, and the adjoining cemetery is filled with graves dating back to the 1100s. Many of those burial markers bear my surname and contain the remains of early members of my family in that area. There is also a public housing project on a street of the same name.

My ancestors left Bramerton for the New World in 1640. I am the 11th generation in North America. My first grandchild was born in Newmarket (about 40 miles away) in 1990. A family joke is that it took us 350 years to get 40 miles down the road.

 

[BigBoy99]

If you rent a vehicle and are concerned about getting subsequent tickets from speed cameras, use a credit card to charge the rental fees and then cancel the card as soon as you get home. The ticket from the speed camera will be sent to the rental company and if your credit card can not be charged, you won't have to pay it.

 

[Sistema1927]

I rented a car in England for two weeks about 10 years ago. Even though I had been driving for over 40 years I felt like a complete novice. Fortunately, my son sat in the shotgun seat and called out navigation instructions while my wife sat in the back and prayed.

It took about 2 days before I was comfortable enough to determine which exit from the roundabouts that I needed to take without my son calling them out. During those first two days I needed to concentrate all of my attention on trying to stay in the center of my lane and remind myself that I needed to keep left.

Fortunately, I have driven a manual transmission from the beginning, and the only difference was the location of the shifter. I did try to shift my door handle a couple of times.

 

[Onomea]

I own cars in the US and in Japan. In Japan they drive on the left side of the road, and cars have their steering wheels on the right side of the car.

I find it takes me about a week of driving to fully adjust to the point where what side of the road to be on when completing a turn becomes unconscious. At first I need to think about it. For whatever reason, it seems harder for me to adjust back to the US than back to Japan.

In the US, I once pulled out of a parking lot onto a four lane highway and drove to the far side to make a right turn. When I started my right turn, I realized I had two lanes of cars coming straight at me. (For some reason this alarmed my wife.) Hit the gas, kept cranking the wheel to the right, and nipped back into traffic on the other side of the highway heading in the direction I was going.

That was a dicey one.

The other thing is the lights/blinker and the windshield wiper levers being reversed. Do a lot of hitting the wipers rather than the blinkers when turning when I first get back to either country.

I did drive a wheel-on-the-left BMW 3 series in Japan for a number of years. My wife's car. It's not all that difficult, but it does tend to make whoever's riding shotgun nervous. And I don't think the driver can see as well as a car designed for either the left or right side of the road.

 

[Sistema1927]

The other thing is the lights/blinker and the windshield wiper levers being reversed. Do a lot of hitting the wipers rather than the blinkers when turning when I first get back to either country.

Interesting. The car that I rented had the wipers (right side) and blinkers (left side) in the same location as here in the States. The only thing different was the shifter.

 

[Onomea]

That is interesting... Seems strange that the UK would be a one off like that...

I suppose people in the UK drive over to the Continent all the time. So I would guess in Europe one must see a lot of drivers driving wheel-on-the-right UK cars driving on the right side of the road in Europe.... Or, what about all those lorry/truck drivers driving back and forth?

The Japanese and Germans, and I think other European makers, make cars either way, steering wheel on left or right, depending on where they are selling. So far as I know, US makers don't.

 

[Rustyt1953]

When I was in high school one of the driver's ed cars had two steering wheels. One of the teachers would occasionally drive it home and pilot it from the right seat just to draw stares.

He said he got a kick out of it.

 

[TXBryan]

Used to do a fair amount of driving in Holland. The Dutch drive right so that was not a problem. A Dutch business friend was navigating me (in my rental) to a restaurant about dusk one evening and casually told me to turn right, which I did, onto a nice, smooth, wide, but oddly dark "road." I commented about the lack of much illumination in the way of streetlights and he nonchalantly informed it was pretty well-lit for a bike path. It was so wide I managed a turnabout. He assumed I knew the difference between an upcoming street and the bike path which came sooner. He was more specific in his instructions after this incident.

Everyone bikes in Holland and they have the bike path infrastructure to support that to the extent they're nicer than most of the roads around here. I was reminded of my utilization of all available means of transport for several years by my "friend."

 

[oldbrownhat]

When I was in high school one of the driver's ed cars had two steering wheels. One of the teachers would occasionally drive it home and pilot it from the right seat just to draw stares.

He said he got a kick out of it.

Our local postie has a RH drive van (Daihatsu?) which is really convenient as she doesn't have to stretch across the passenger side to reach the box.

 

[LVSteve]

Interesting. The car that I rented had the wipers (right side) and blinkers (left side) in the same location as here in the States. The only thing different was the shifter.

That's how most, if not all, cars ended up being configured in the UK from the early 80s on. There was much wailing that you could no longer signal and change gear at the same time from some quarters. Making the UK cars the same as those on the Continent must have saved GM and Ford a very large wedge.

IIRC, cars built specifically for the Japanese market, and maybe only Japanese makes, have the signals and wipers the other way as described by Onomea.