FLASH NEWS
Why do the British drive vehicles on the right, while others drive on the left?
2024-03-02 22:28:25 / JETË
In an analysis, the CNN journalist tries to answer the question of why Americans drive vehicles from the left side, while the English drive from the right.
I drove to rural Pennsylvania Amish country, looking to find the answer to a question I've had since 2015 when I traveled to England on a business trip.
When I was driving around London, very carefully, in a Mini Cooper, I asked myself: Why was I driving on the "wrong" side of the road? I am from the United States, which began as a group of former British colonies. We speak the same language, more or less, but we point the tools in different directions.
It turns out that about 30% of the world's countries drive on the left and about 70% on the right.
In Europe, Napoleon Bonaparte played a central role. In the United States, Henry Ford often gets the credit, but this is actually wrong.
That's how I ended up in a former tobacco barn in Conestoga, Pennsylvania, looking at a wagon — just days after testing a Tesla Cybertruck, its modern electric successor. John Stehman, whose family had farmed in the area since 1743, met me. He is president of the Conestoga Area Historical Society and, as I had learned from researching the history of roads and motoring, the Conestoga stagecoach was the key to this whole story.
Wagon trains
These large, leather-topped wagons became icons of America's westward expansion. However, in the early 1700s, western Pennsylvania was the far frontier.
Conestoga wagons were developed by local carpenters and blacksmiths to transport goods, including farm produce and items traded by Native Americans, to markets in Philadelphia. Philadelphia was at that time one of the largest cities in the colony.
I imagined myself walking down a path leading a team of horses pulling this blue cart. Conestoga wagons had the controls on the left side, near the driver's right hand. This meant that the driver was in the middle of the road and the wagon on the right.
Eventually, there was so much trade between Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and Philadelphia that America's first major highway was created. The Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike opened in 1795. Among the rules written into its charter, according to MG Lay's Roads of the World, was that all traffic had to keep to the right, just like the Conestoga wagons.
In 1804, New York became the first state to rule that traffic must keep to the right of way on all streets and highways.
Some people credit Henry Ford with standardizing American traffic on the right side of the road because, in 1908, Ford Motor Co. put the steering wheel on the left side of the wildly popular Model T. However, Ford was responding to a custom that had been established long ago. Strange is the fact that the rest of Europe, except Britain, moves to the right, just like the Americans.
Napoleon's march through Europe
The French revolutionary government under the leadership of Maximilien Robespierre, best known for the "Reign of Terror" of the late 18th century, demanded that all vehicles steer to the right. This French policy is said to have been spread by Napoleon, when his armies were marching across Europe. Some evidence of this can be found by looking at a map of the Napoleonic empire in 1812.
There is a nation not allied to Napoleon. In Sweden, vehicles were driven on the left until suddenly, in 1967, when drivers started to drive on the right.
While Britain continued in the opposite direction. According to the historian Lay, this is related to the different types of transportation used. There were fewer industrial-sized wagons in Britain, and more small and horse-drawn carriages. Knights preferred to stand on the left to hold up their right hands to salute or in other cases, to fight.
Whatever the reason, there are sometimes consequences when drivers change direction. Instructors advise drivers to train before driving on the other side.
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