UK03 – Driving

It occured to me this morning that I hadn’t talked much about driving while in the UK. It is, however, the Number One Most Common Question One is Asked (“How did you like driving on the wrong side of the road?”)

(The Number Two Question is “Did you see any shows while in London?”)

The answer (to the Number One Question) is, “It’s just like driving at home, only on the other side of the road.”

Which is more or less true. The biggest problem in driving on the left side of the road is not the driving part of it, but the turning/pulling out/pulling in part of it. You have to actually think about where you are going, rather than just “knowing” how to move.

One thing which simplied matters for us slightly was that we ended up with automatic transmissions. I’ve driven manual (much more common on car rentals in the UK) over there twice, and it’s not bad, just a matter of shifting with the left hand, rather than the right. But it is one more thing to chew up processing cycles with, to be sure, and aside from a few cruises along country roads when it would have been handy, I didn’t miss the manual transmission all that much.

There are two other aspects of driving in the UK that set it apart from the US. One is also frequently asked about or commented upon: roundabouts (traffic circles). These are used frequently in lieu of traffic signalled intersections or, in the case of highways, over/underpasses. In most cases, they perform their job admirably. If you’re on the main road, it’s rare that you have to do more than slightly slow, whereas if you are on a smaller cross-road, it’s rare you have to wait very long for a gap.

Where roundabouts have problems are (a) they take a fair amount of real estate, especially in cities, and (b) where traffic gets too heavy, it does become difficult for cross-traffic to get through. At which point they add traffic signals to the roundabout, and it actually becomes slower than a normal signalled intersection.

There’s also sort of a vagueness of lanes in most roundabouts, whereby one stays toward the center while the preferred exit is a ways away, then drifts over as it approaches. When lanes get added, it becomes more complex.

Still, for 90% of the cases where I encountered them in the UK, I thought roundabouts worked fine. And navigating them with the help of a friend (“Okay, you’ll be exiting at two o’clock”) is really simple. If you miss the exit you need, you just go around again …

Navigation is the other complexity. Because there are so many roadways, and they wander from town to town, rarely do you see something labeled as “north” or “west” or the like. There is excellent signage, but it is always in terms of the highway name the road is on (or leads to), and the next town that it’s headed toward. (An exception to this is the Motorways.)

That means you really need to be tracking along where you are headed toward on a map, if you are not familiar with the route. That makes having a navigator in the passenger seat nearly a requirement. I’ve driven solo on the UK and Ireland, and it’s almost a guarantee that you’re going to make mistakes. A good navigator (Margie is, I must say, excellent) makes all the difference in the world.