Are there any differences between how people drive in Canada and how people drive in the UK? Apart from being on the other side of the road of course!

For example, I know from experience that in France, drivers will allow you past or make room for you when you're on a motorbike but this is quite rare in the UK. Also, there are quite a lot of middle lane hoggers in the UK (or at least where I live!) but this doesn't seem to be so much of a problem in Europe.

No country will be perfect and we will all have our own personal hang-ups but I was just wondering how different the UK and Canada roads are etc?

In Canada there is neither law nor convention governing which lane people should drive in. You can drive as fast as you like in whichever lane you like and can overtake on either side. Thus, when a road widens into a dual carriageway, there is a 50% chance that the car in front will take the left lane. Progress along a motorway is made in a series of swerves, to pass drivers comfortably put-putting along in the left, right or centre lane. Care is required because, of course, as you dive from the right for the gap in the middle, someone is doing the same from the left and you have no means of seeing each other. Cars collide a lot, people sue each other tirelessly, insurance costs an arm and a leg (<makes note to compare rates with Hong Kong>).

On a rural road, vehicles turning left commonly pull over into the oncoming lane half a mile or so before the corner, this can be disconcerting as you will then overtake them on the wrong side ("wrong" to an immigrant, cradles don't recognise sides). It's more disconcerting if you're the oncoming traffic.

Roundabouts baffle the populace, people go around them in either direction or drive straight across the middle.

Corners are typically cut so that, at a T junction, a vehicle turning left cannot stop at the lane markings. The driver of any vehicle wishing to turn left into the road where the first vehicle is stopped would then be obliged to go around the stationary vehicle, rather than across the corner at 45 degrees. This upsets Canadians, if you do it they'll jab their pudgy fingers at you and make throat cutting gestures.

Many drivers are recent arrivals from ox cart economies, unaccustomed to the speed of progress usual in motorcars, they proceed in a series of lateral sways approximately centering their SUVs on the lane markings. "Asian" one guesses, in that polictically correct manner, on seeing a veering Mercedes.

Be aware that most drivers cannot see backwards out of their vehicles and have no view over their shoulders, they will change lanes in front of you, partly because rudeness is usual but mainly because, from the wheel of something-pretending-it-can-be-used-on-grass, there is no way to see the next lane.

Buicks, Camrys, Corrolas and BMWs hold the traffic up, don't get behind them at the lights.

All in all I think it fair to say that driving in Canada is a miserable business. A good car would be wasted here which, I suppose, is why Canadians,as a rule, drive beige or grey shitboxes.

I predict this being an amusing thread of several pages
Obviously the main difference is being on the other side of the road.
Canada has good drivers and it has bad drivers same as the UK.
Canada doesnt have an obsession with roundabouts or calming circles as they call them in my location. We seem to be obsessed with traffic lights on major highways rather than having frontage roads or over and underpasses to keep the traffic flowing.
Stop signs are just a suggestion almost like red stop lights. Give Way or yield lanes are totally foreign to Canadian drivers as evident when coming off a ramp and trying to join a major highway.
Texting and yakking on a cell phone is now a pre requisite while driving and also juggling with a Timmies double double.
Arret means stop in French. Some places let you turn right on a red stop light and if you dont you will hear the drivers response behind you.
The hand signals used by drivers cannot be found in any Provincial drivers handbook.
All in all its pretty much like the UK

I think there are three major differences (based on Ontario):

- driving after consuming alcohol is frowned upon in the UK, driving while consuming alcohol (and then throwing the bottle out of the window) is acceptable, indeed common, in Canada.

- it's common for people to drive quickly in the UK, I love to be able to get out on to the M25 and really go, whereas here maintaining 100 is on the 401 is a struggle, see below.

- lane discipline can be lax in the UK, here there's simply no concept of it. I've given up on headlight flashing and horn blowing and now just go around on the wrong side.

I was under the assumption that the M25 was the UKs biggest parking lot and was almost impossible to reach the 70 mph limit.

Yes it is tempting while driving on the Trans Canada to put your foot down
especially in those 90 kmh areas and meet up with an oncoming OPP car with radar.
At least you can hunt while driving over here pop the 30.06 out of the passenger window and boom got yourself a deer or moose.
I didnt realise that TO had so many places to off road given the amount of 4 x 4 vehicles on the downtown streets.
Plus you can fit at least several people in the back end of a Ford F150 who may or may not be drunk and going woohooo to everyone they pass.

It's not lawful to shoot from a vehicle. You can have a loaded gun in the vehicle but you must step out to fire it. I know this isn't a law strictly followed, look at the number of road signs with bullet holes in them, but, technically, you can't do that.

Theres technically and legally a lot of things you cant do while driving a vehicle over here but they do it anyway.

This is a popcorn thread if ever there was one

There should probably be a distinction made early on between GTA/ Big City Drivers and the rest of the country. Driving in my area has the occasional Bozo, but its generally pleasant and courteous. Not so much in the GTA in my limited experience.


In technical terms turning right at a red light is permited here, and there are no speed cameras, so both of those are good things.

When I arrived here a few years ago I thought indicators (Turn signals) were an optional extra, like fog lights or a sunroof. Nine times out of ten you see the turn signal being used to confirm the turn already made....or in the process of making it..... Any useful advance warning of the drivers intention to turn, change lanes etc, is usually as scarce as hens teeth.

Unless you are a pedestrian, who has the light and should be able to confidently cross the street.

Instead, I find myself doing the following little dance. Car revs engine impatiently, I step off the curb, car rolls forward past the white line, I stop (not wanting to be run over, but usually just to make a point), car driver glares impatiently, I glare back and gesticulate at the green man, I continue to walk, car whizzes forward as soon as I have cleared their bumper.

I have never had as many cars graze me with their wing mirrors or bumpers as I have since I moved here!

Fair point, and I should have made it clear that you are supposed to stop at the red, that pedestrians have right of way, and that you turn only if safe to do so...

There seems a lot less patience with pedestrians in the big city too. Patience in general seems in better supply out here in the boonies.

To the Original Poster: so all the subsequent posters have you bamboozled and terrified. Suffice to say huge exaggerations abound. I've driven in the UK many times and drivers are pretty much the same as in Canada.

Absolutely. Walking in Toronto requires a great amount of concentration. On my daily walk to work it was not unusual to see the two worst culprits, taxis and city buses, going through a red light with no pause at all.

Even here in Guelph, with a considerably less frantic pace, there is still one junction where I know the cars won't stop. And if they do, they'll do the whole aggressive revving thing. I take some pleasure in seeing just how slowly I can move

Edited to add: None of the above is a 'huge exaggeration', merely a by-product of the turning right on red rule.

Plus dont even get us started on cyclists sharing the road

Ack! Taxis. Taxi drivers have no clue where they're going nor when they're going there, the movements of a taxi are utterly unpredictable to the driver, nevermind the drivers of other vehicles. Give taxis a wide berth and be glad the drivers aren't holding scapels.