lestill22

Would anybody from the UK care to share their experiences with driving in America. You know on the right side of the road. My fiance is moving out in seven weeks and we live in an area with very poor public transportation. How long did it take to adjust?

Thanks,

Lisa

JulianB

No problem at all, took to it like a duck to water.

doctor scrumpy

It took me a few days to adjust to being a passenger in my fiancée's car. The first trip in her car had my brain screaming at me that not only was I on the wrong side of the car, we were on the wrong side of the road.and where the hell is the steering wheel too ?

Taffyles

I had no problem at all adjusting- you just have to concentrate a bit harder for a while until it comes naturally. Turning left at junctions is when you have to be most careful, and the lack of lane discipline on the freeways takes some getting used to. I still cringe every time I overtake in the slow lane, but you have to do it sometimes as people will sit and dawdle in the fast lanes. Negotiating stop signs is another thing you have to get used to but they actually work quite well, and turning right on red at some traffic lights doesn't feel strange after about a week.
I've only taken off on the left side of the road twice in 11 years, and both times it was when I had a friend out from Britain in the car- weird that.

Florida_03

What about roundabouts? Or don't they have that many?

JulianB

Most Americans wouldn't know what a roundabout was.

Taffyles

I've only ever seen one roundabout- in Sarasota-and that's easy enough to deal with, except that they have give way signs on the roundabout, so you have to stop a few times on the way around . Just remembered, there are actually two roundabouts in Sara- so, no, not many to deal with at all.

whatever

During a business trip in Michigan, a lady I was out driving with nearly fell off her seat laughing at the idea of a 'roundabout' and it became the main subject during dinner that night raising many eyebrows and even more laughs!
What I could not figure out was they found no humour what so ever regarding a type of 'U' turn they had in their town called a 'Dipsy-Doodle' !!!!!! This 'U'Turn meant that you had to drive 250 yards in the opposite direction before you could turn around to go in the direction you originally wanted!!!! And were the weird ones?!?!?!?

superpat

They have a few roundabouts in New England, but they call them 'rotaries'. There's one in Plymouth, MA, just by the appropriately named Roadkill Cafe.

We were having lunch in their first floor (upstairs!) dining room, and watched the tourists' cars slowly negotiating the rotary, everyone unsure of who had right of way. I asked the waitress "Do you see many accidents down there". She just smiled and said "All the time."

Emm

I can't comment on driving in America but in Sweden we drive on the right too. The major problem I had was with trying to change gear with the window winder (wrong hand automatically reaching for the gear stick). I found that hiring an automatic solved that problem neatly and allowed me to time get used to driving on the 'wrong' side of the road.

As long as you are driving the right vehicle for the country (left hand drive for driving on the right, etc) it is not much of a problem to get used to and takes around a week to adjust initially and after that an hour or so to get used to swapping back and forth.

A good tip to remember if you get confused about which side of the road you should be on, is that the drivers position should always be in the centre of the road and not at the edge. Then you can't go wrong.

Nobody else has mentioned it but the rule about stopping for school busses does not exist in the UK and since the penalties are particularly harsh, it might be as well to point it out to him. I hope everything works out well for you both.

Emm.

Yorkieabroad

I'd driven left hand drive rental cars on holidays in Spain, US etc, so it didn't take that long to adjust - I think most of the points have been covered above. BUT - beware of that period when you think you've got it all sussed, and you start relaxing, cos thats when it'll bite you in the tail if its going to! For me it was after about 3/4 weeks, when I pulled out of a T-junction to cross a dual carriageway. The kids were shouting in the back, I was trying to ignore the ringing mobile (pet hate when I'm driving) and I reverted to 'type'(ie right hand drive), and looked the wrong way before I pulled out....I was lucky and got away with it....I know a few friends that weren't quite so lucky, but fortunately got away with minor fender benders and a few blushes ..

lairdside

Took me a while to get used to being able to do u-turns on main roads, at traffic lights etc (unless there's a sign specifically prohibiting it).

jaytee

Driving in the US is more relaxed in terms of official rules (there seem to be fewer of them for the driver and many of them are not enforced). The US people take the informal rules much more seriously (get out of the way in the fast lane) than the formal ones, while British people see the official rules of the road as the ones to be taken most seriously. I would have to say the roadsigns are not as good in the US, although there are more of them. NO ROUNDABOUTS (rare).. lots of red traffic lights. You may pull up to a red light and then realize that you are blocking another, small intersection, yet there was only a small sign and nothing painted onto the street. In Britain, they go out of their way to draw attention to hazards and conflicts well ahead of time (painted stripes that go on for a mile, junction boxes, etc.). If you're not familiar with an area off the freeway, then you need to be more cautious driving around than the locals (that goes double, or triple in the US). The signs/warnings just aren't that good for out-of-towners.

Driving in England seems more difficult. You have blind corners and narrow winding sloped roads and parking in the street that would not be allowed in America.

brisray

The things I found hardest to get used to was being able to turn right on red - but lots of Americans don't know you can do that either. You can also turn left on red at the intersection of two one way roads. One thing to watch out for though is if you do get into an accident when you do this it's your fault.

For the first couple of weeks I couldn't get used to looking to the right for the rear view mirror - I kept looking out of the window up at the sky.

Beware the STOP signs - they appear at some very unexpected places, even on "fast" roads. It's even worse when the lines are painted on the road the "wrong" way.

Never, ever try and beat a train at unmanned crossings - Terre Haute, Indiana, where I live, is full of them and it's far better to wait the 15 minutes for a 100+ waggon freight train to pass than end up splattered all over the tracks. You'll be surprised at the number of people who play chicken with the trains and lose.

There are no count-down markers, if you're on the far side of a 3 or 4 lane road and you see the sign for the turn-off you want, the chances are you're going to miss it - and some of the intersections are a very long way apart before you can turn around. Not only that but they have exits on the freeways on the left and the right. It's very confusing, but take a note where the exit sign is on above the main sign, if the green sign is on the right then the exit is on the right, if on the left the exit is on the left.

"Undertaking" takes a bit of getting used to as well. As does traffic joining the road you're on from the left and the right simultaneously. A bit nerve racking the first couple of times you get a couple of semi's (artics) doing this, it looks like you're going to get squashed.

The state of some of the roads are appalling, but this is mainly due to the bad winter weather in some states which tears up the tarmac and concrete really badly. For example, be careful using the right lane of I70 to Indianapolis until they finish resurfacing the road around every March or April, you may end up tearing the suspension right out from the car. They also don't use reflective paint, which makes all the road markings disappear in the rain. Nor they do they use a lot of cat's eyes.

The worst story I've heard about is this - I've had a couple of (American) friends make a minor mistake when driving and have had guns pointed at them by the offended motorist.

Having said all of that, away from the cities, driving in America is actually pretty good. I've been here 18 months and find driving here far more relaxing than in the UK and Europe.

Ray

brisray

Something else I forgot, try and remember which side of the car you're supposed to be getting in on.

I lost track of the number of times I used to try and drive the car by getting in on the passenger side. Even when I picked up my second car at the dealers I did it then too. The salesmen just rolled around laughing their heads off.

Other stuff I remembered, I don't know about other states, but Indiana has nothing like the MOT test. It's not that uncommon to see cars around that look like they're held together by duct tape and wishful thinking, especially in the rural areas.

Some states get quaranateed snow every winter, but that doesn't mean Americans are any better than driving on snow and ice than anyone else.

Some more observations -

If you do get into a minor collison, don't worry about the car exploding. Despite the films, American cars don't usually explode on the slightest impact. Well, the Pinto did but only because the fuel tank was right behind the back bumper.

Also, try not to hit the fire hydrants, in the films these 4" or 6" diameter pipes just snap off. If you've seen the size of the these things they'll also do quite a bit of damage to your car. And don't park near them.

http://www.attrition.org/gallery/pri...s-bmw.jpg.html

If you live out in the boonies get deer whistlers fitted. The deer here aren't those little fallow things they have in the UK, these are big, big beasts. Indiana gets around 11,000 deer collisions a year.

http://public.fotki.com/Viola4ka/dee.../dsc01201.html
http://www.car-accidents.com/pages/a...ry/1-1-02.html
http://www.car-accidents.com/pages/a.../10-14-02.html
http://www.safteng.net/Accident%20Ph...%20durango.htm

Ray