Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Why Don't We All Drive on the Same Side?

Episode Date: December 20, 2020

Standards make everything easier. When everyone can agree on a standard way to do things, regardless of how it is done, it can reduce confusion and facilitate progress. You’d think if there was one thing that would be standardized everywhere, it would be the side of the road everyone drives on. I mean, there are only two options. Yet, there is no global standard for what side to drive on. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Standards make everything easier. When everyone can agree on a standard way to do things, regardless of how it's done, it can often reduce confusion and facilitate progress. You'd think if there was one thing that would be standardized everywhere, it would be the side of the road everyone drives on. I mean, there's only two ways to do it. Yet, there is no such global standard. Learn more about why we don't all drive on the same side of the road

on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Fear is the virus is trending on TikTok. Vaccines are poison. Then your yoga teacher says that sex traffic children are being sacrificed by satanic liberals, but it's all okay. The Great Awakening is coming. What is happening? Every week on Conspiratuality Podcast, we explore the fever dreams that suck friends,

family, and wellness gurus down the right-wing cult spiral in a search for salvation. This episode is sponsored by Scotty Vest. Let's be honest. 2020 hasn't been a very good year for travel. However, at some point, and I am not predicting when, we will be able to travel again. And when that time comes, you'll want to be ready. Scotty vest jackets and clothing can help you be a better traveler, whether it's going through airport security or just carrying your gear around town.

And of course, you don't need to wait to travel to start wearing your Scotty vest gear because all the extra pockets are useful, even if you're at home. You can get 15% off your next order by going to Scottyvest.com and using coupon code everything everywhere, all one word, at checkout. You'd think that with only two possibilities, setting a standard for what side of the road to drive on would be really easy. Driving isn't like electricity, where you can have any number of voltages and plugs. Yet, the world we live in is divided between countries that drive on the left

and countries which drive on the right. Approximately 70% of humanity lives in a right-driving country, and 30% in a left-driving country. Of the 195 countries that are members or observers in the United Nations, 141 drive on the right and 54 drive on the left. The percentage who drive on the left is large enough that there isn't any incentive for them to change. If it were, say, 10% of the population, there might be more pressure to get with the program and get everyone on the same page. But with 30%, that's enough to not bother changing.

Most of the left-hand driving countries in the world fall into one or both of two categories. They are islands or they are former British colonies. countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and most of southern Africa are former British colonies where left-hand driving was adopted by the British. Other large left-hand driving countries, such as Indonesia and Japan, are islands that don't have to worry about road connections with their neighbors. So how did the state of affairs come to pass? Why doesn't everyone drive on the same side of the road? Back before cars, for the most part, there weren't any strict rules for what side of the road you should use.

Land transportation usually didn't go very far. The vast majority of transportation was on foot or horseback, and the rules were a lot like the rules on a sidewalk today. You might walk on the right or the left, depending on what everyone else is doing at the moment, and you just want to make sure not to bump into anyone else. Going to the right or the left was usually left to local custom, and there might have been different rules for different roads between towns. When you research this topic, you'll find many stories about why right or left side traditions developed, and most of them might have some truth, but the reality is there's scant, evidence to prove any of these theories as to why people use one side or the other. Most of the theories are based on the fact that most people are right-handed. 90% of the population is right-handed, and back in the day, left-handers were often forced to do

things right-handed, so de facto, everyone was sort of right-handed. In ancient Rome, the custom was to ride on the left. The theory is that if you're on a horse, you'd want to have your right-hand-free and closest to the person passing you in the event that you needed to use your sword. Likewise, if you had a wagon, you'd hold the reins with your left hand, so your sword hand was free, and you could also use your right hand for a whip. Also, right-handed people tend to find it easier to mount a horse from the left. It's most likely that the British tradition of driving on the left is a legacy from its time as a Roman province. The earliest mentions of the side of the road people should stay on date from the 17th and 18th centuries, from laws dealing with crossing bridges in London.

The laws indicated that people should keep to the left. but the fact that such laws were necessary, and the fact that they only specified bridges meant that staying to the left wasn't necessarily universal in England at the time. So if the Romans were on the left, and Britain was a Roman province and there on the left, then why does the rest of Europe drive on the right? Rome had a far larger impact on continental Europe than it did in Britain. Here it's hard to tell, because what side of the road you drove a wagon on wasn't something that most people bothered to write about.

According to legend, and again there is not much proof for this, Napoleon changed the side of the road the French used from left to right because he was left-handed. This is doubtful because there was some written evidence after Napoleon, which indicates that there was no standard. Author Edward Planta wrote in 1827 in his observations about Paris that, quote, The coachman have no established rule by which they drive on the right or the left of the road, but they cross and jostle with one another without ceremony, unquote. We do know that on the European continent, there was a jumble of rules all over as they entered the last part of the 19th century and saw the development of the automobile. It was at this point that things started to coalesce. France appears to have been the first to have adopted traveling on the right, and then every other country standardized it over time. In most countries, it wasn't so much switching to the right as it was just finally setting a nationwide standard and then picking the right because their neighbors did.

To use an analogy, you can think of France as a magnet. and then all the other European countries changed the orientation of their magnets so their polls aligned with France. In China, the southern provinces around Hong Kong and Macau were on the left before World War II and the northern provinces were on the right. The nationalist government decreed the whole country over to the right, and then when the communists took control, they just kept the convention the way it was. Korea switched from left to right after the war because they were connected to China and because

left-hand driving was implemented by the Japanese. Most of Africa had their side of the road set by either the British or the French, with some countries like Ghana, switching to be in line with their neighbors. By 1950, most nations had standardized on a side of the road for their entire country, and used the same side of the road they used today. If the United States and Canada are former British colonies, why do they drive in the right instead of the left? All evidence points to the fact that early settlers in the Americas used the right side from the beginning.

Some of this is attributed to the fact that the weapon being used by wagon drivers at the time was a gun, not a sword. If you held a musket in your right hand, you would rest it on your left arm, and that is the direction you'd ideally want to point it. Moreover, there was also a great deal of resistance to adopting European customs in the Americas. As such, early American wagons were designed to be driven on the right. The first law in the United States mandating which side of the road you had to use was in Pennsylvania in 1792 when they built a turnpike between Lancaster and Philadelphia. In 1804, the state of New York decreed using the right side of the road for the entire state. By the time of the Civil War,

using the right side of the road was the custom or the law everywhere in the United States. There were some places in Canada that actually used the left, but eventually they too adopted to the right because of the United States. There's really no intrinsic benefit to using the right or the left side of the road. Ultimately, it's pretty arbitrary. However, once you pick a side, it's very difficult to switch. However, it has been done. In not, In 1967, Sweden switched from driving on the left to driving on the right. Switching the side of the road an entire country drives on isn't something that can be phased in gradually. It has to be done all at once.

The day it happened in Sweden was on September 3, 1967, a day which was known in Swedish as Hagen Traffick Homla Gigen. My apologies to any Swedes who might be listening. Translated, it means the right-hand drive diversion. The day was planned and announced well in advance. All of Sweden's neighbors drove on the right, and 90% of the cars had steering wheels on the left, as people do in right-hand driving countries. On September 3rd, all non-essential traffic in the country was banned. At 4.50 a.m., everyone on the road was required to pull over, and then at 5 a.m., they could resume on the other side of the road.

It was a huge undertaking that required changing most of the road signs, bus stops, and a giant marketing campaign. Iceland underwent a similar process in 1968. The most recent country to do this was Samoa, which went from the right to the left in 2009 to be more in line with Australia and New Zealand. One thing which I've barely touched on is cars. Most cars manufactured for driving on the right are left-hand drive. In other words, the steering wheel is on the left. Likewise, cars for countries that drive on the left are right-hand drive cars. There are a few countries where this is often reversed. It isn't by law, but usually a function of where they get their cars from. In the Bahamas, for example, as a former British colony, they drive in the left. However, most of their vehicles come from the United States, which has left-hand drive. I remember getting a ride in Nassau, and when we left the parking lot, the driver had to reach over the passenger seat to pay to get out of the lot.

The U.S. Virgin Islands is similar in that they are the only part of the United States to drive on the left, but most of their cars come from the U.S. and have left-hand drive. Likewise, in the Pacific, some countries like Micronesia, I've seen just the opposite. They drive on the right, but their cars mostly come from Japan and are right-hand drive cars. What happens when two countries border each other and they drive on different sides? Well, it depends on the border crossing, but it could be as complicated as an overpass which crosses over, or as I've seen at some crossings, there's just a sign that says, please drive on the other side now.

For most people, the side of the road you drive on is something that is so ingrained and instinctual that they are terrified at renting a car in a country where they drive on the other side of the road. The first time I did this was in Auckland, New Zealand in 2007. I rented a camper van I had to pick up in the middle of the city. I remember clutching both hands on the steering wheel, turning off the radio, and repeating the mantra over and over, stay on the left, stay on the left, stand the left. Left hand and right-hand drive cars are not mere images of each other.

The direction you shift gears is exactly the same, but instead of shifting out, you have to shift in. Likewise, I always found myself turning on the windshield wipers whenever I wanted to use the turn signal. Today, I've driven tens of thousands of kilometers on the left, and I consider myself an ambidextrous driver. I don't think so much about right or left, so much as orientating myself as the driver with the center of the lane. Now, when I rent a car where they drive on the left, I can quickly go into left-side mode without any difficulty. It's too bad there wasn't a more formal, international standard body that was developed before the advent of the automobile.

Things would have been easy to change back before there were road signs and steering wheels. As it currently stands, however, outside of a few changes, the current system is something we are probably going to be stuck with forever. Executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is James McAula. The associate producer is Thor Thompson. Remember to leave a five-star review to get your review read on the show. They can be left at Apple Podcasts, Podcast, Podcast Republic, or wherever you listen to the show.

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