Why to the British drive on the Left side of the Road?
In 2011, I was shopping around for my first Aston Martin at Aston Martin of New England and was choosing between the DB9 and the Vantage. After test driving both, I fell in love with the V12 Exhaust note on the DB9. It was sooo throaty and weirdly enough elegant for a V12; not too brash and not to soft, just full of confidence where you haven’t past the line of arrogance.
It wasn’t until I went to the dealership that I totally forgot one thing from the test drive – the parking brake is mounted between the driver’s seat and the driver’s door. Right there, with just that sentence, you can smell trouble as it’s not easily accessible in an emergency as it would be in a center console.
Why the Fudge is the parking brake on the left side of the car? Is it a British thing? If so, is it as crazy as why the British drive on the Left Side of the road whereas Americans drive on the right side of the road?
Being curious, I started researching to answer these 2 questions.
The answer to why the parking brake is between the driver’s side door and the seat is perplexing. Even older Jaguar XK's, Porsche 944’s and Lamborghini Diablo’s have it there as well. My reason is simple, it saves room by not having it in the traditional Center Console.
To answer the other question, which is the reason for the blog post, why do the British drive on the Left Side of the Road?
That answer lies in historical reason combined with their first mode of transportation – horses!
In the Middle Ages you never knew who you were going to meet when travelling on horseback. Most people are right-handed, so if a stranger passed by on the right of you, your right hand would be free to use your sword if required. Mounting and dismounting were also easier from the left side of the horse, and safer done by the side of the road than in the center. (Similarly, medieval castle staircases spiral in a clockwise direction going upwards, so the defending soldiers would be able to stab down around the twist but those attacking (going up the stairs would not.)
As roadway infrastructure and transportation methods evolved for the British, they refused to give up their left-hand driving ways and I 1773 introduced the General Highways Act, which encouraged driving on the left.
It might seem bizarre that U.K. drivers stay on the left, but they’re not the only ones. Around 35 percent of the world population does the same, including people in Ireland, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, India, and some Caribbean islands.
The remaining 65% adopted driving or riding on the left when large wagons became popular for transporting goods. These wagons were drawn by several pairs of horses and had no driver’s seat. Instead, to control the horses, the driver sat on the horse at the back left, thus keeping his whip hand free. Sitting on the left however made it difficult to judge the traffic coming the other way, as anyone who has driven a left-hand drive car along the winding lanes of Britain will agree! So the driver kept to the right side of the road as he wanted other wagons to pass on his left and that’s how.
These huge wagons were best suited to the wide-open spaces and large distances of the US, and the first keep-to-the-right law was passed in Pennsylvania in 1792, with many Canadian and US states following suit later.
In France, a British Rival superpower, a decree of 1792 ordered traffic to keep to the “common” right and Napoleon, whos was Left-Handed later enforced the rule in all French territories.
In Britain there wasn’t much call for these massive wagons and the smaller British vehicles had seats for the driver to sit on behind the horses. As most people are right-handed, the driver would sit to the right of the seat, so his whip hand was free.
Traffic congestion in 18th century London led to a law being passed to make all traffic on London Bridge keep to the left in order to reduce collisions. This rule was incorporated into the Highway Act of 1835 and was adopted throughout the British Empire.
What cemented Right Side Driving was when Henry Ford unveiled his Model T in 1908. The driver’s seat was on the left, meaning that cars would have to drive on the right-hand side of the road to allow front and back passengers to exit the car onto the curb. According to National Geographic, this influenced a change in many countries: Canada, Italy, and Spain changed to right-side driving in the 1920s and most of Eastern Europe followed suit in the 1930s. As recently as 1967 (and thanks to around $120 million from their government’s pocket) Swedish drivers began driving on the right. However British drivers remain on the left, and this is highly unlikely to change.
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