Why Do Some Countries Drive On The Left?

Have you ever wondered what’s behind the side of the road you drive on? We all just take whatever side our nations drive on for granted and get on with transporting ourselves to where we need to be, but have you ever actually given any thought as to why this huge cultural difference is found in different places around the globe? Let me explain.

Transportation using roads has existed for thousands of years as natural routes of least restriction arose and trade routes began to form, and it is from the Medieval period that the original road conduct was devised.

We all used to originally drive on the left-hand side of the road, and weirdly it was all down to self-defence. With 85 per cent of the world being right-handed – and with everyone wanting to kill each other at any given moment – it was deemed safe to have your sword hand nearest to the on-coming traffic, just in case a skirmish was initiated. This meant leading your horse up the left-hand side of the road.

The entire civilised world was therefore travelling on the left until around the 1700s. In this era, Europe was in great upheaval through colonisation and exploration, along with a bunch of violent revolutions. The French Revolution resulted in the country doing everything it possibly could to change its laws and customs, including moving to the right-hand side of the road. Napoleon kept this trend going, and while he set about conquering huge chunks of Europe, he also forced the French custom of travel across his recently conquered states.

With traffic soon growing in-tandem with population sizes, most of mainland Europe succumbed to right-hand driving, simply to keep things moving as easily as possible.

Elsewhere in the world, the likes of Britain, France, Holland and Portugal were setting about colonising the Americas and Asia, infesting these new lands with their customs and eventually adding them to their individual empires. And it was through the growth of America that 65 per cent of the world now drives on the right-hand side of the road.

This trend was started through a popular new mode of carriage transport that used four horses in a square formation. As there was no ‘driver’s seat’ for the person in control of the cart, he would preferably sit on the rearmost left horse, freeing his right hand to whip the other horses into action. This meant that – to avoid any collisions with oncoming vehicles through bad road placement – the driver would need to be closer to the middle of the road, hence why the cart would be driven from the right. And as these wagons became the most convenient form of transport, the vast majority of the world began to follow this way of thinking.

With the dawn of the motor car brought further fuel to the fire of American influence. With the US pioneering the mass-production of cars, a new world standard was created through the sale of these vehicles worldwide with the steering wheels situated on the left-hand side of the car, therefore being manufactured for driving on the right.

Only 35 per cent of the world have stuck with the original left-hand side of the road, namely the UK, Australia, New Zealand and India. This is purely down to the fact that the British Empire spread to these far-flung countries and therefore UK law swiftly followed. Although the Brits never conquered Japan, British engineers were brought in to produce Japan’s first proper transport system – a great national railway system which had the trains driving on left-handed tracks. This practice was therefore carried into Japan’s own road network, hence why all JDM legends are conveniently (for us Brits) right-hand drive.

So there you have it, the reason the UK drives on the left is due to sword fighting, and the Americans drive on the right to efficiently whip horses!

Have you ever driven in a foreign country that drives on the other side? Or even driven a LHD car in left-driving country? Or vice versa! Comment below with your experiences!