MacGougan at Large

Notes on Cars - 4

Notes on Cars - 4

Driving on the Wrong Side

If there’s one activity that requires every shred of my available attention, it’s driving in one of those wrong-side countries where the oncoming traffic goes to one’s right. Through some cosmic piling-on principle of insult to injury, it happens that those are the very same countries that don’t believe in automatic transmissions. It feels to me like some kind of a rub-your-head-pat-your-belly parlor trick to steer into the left lane from the right side of the car while shifting gears left-handed.

It might be simpler if everything was simply mirror-imaged, but in fact some things are reversed and some things aren’t. Yes, your lane assignment and driving position are backwards. However, your pedals, despite having been moved from the left side of the car to the right side, are still arranged with the gas on the right, the brake to its left, and - in all its quaint glory - the clutch to the further left. Similarly, your gear shift, despite now being on your left, has its gears in a conventional H, with forward-left being first gear and so on.

This is a lot to keep straight in one’s head, particularly when every turn onto a new road requires a conscious override of habit in order to avoid driving straight into a head-on collision. I take some pride in the fact that I’ve been able to drive successfully in both the U.K. and New Zealand - but there was a limit to how successfully I was able to pull it off. Typically, I’d be able to get into gear, get into the correct lane, and stop when I needed to. Then I’d hit the turn signal and the windshield wipers would start up.