Driving on The “Wrong” Side of The Road
By Roseanna Leaton
There are signs placed everywhere, which read, "drive on the left" in numerous different languages. I know myself how easy it is to forget which side of the road you are meant to be on when you are used to driving in one country and then start driving elsewhere.
I drive a lot now in California as well as in the UK. Also, I had got used to the car being on "that" side of the road.
There are two provisos - I am always aware that I as the car driver should be near to the central white line as opposed to the pavement (this is a great tip for anyone driving abroad), and I pay extra attention when driving off from halt signs, as I find this is the time when it is easy to fall back upon instinctive patterns of driving.
If you take steps to make the job of driving on the "wrong" side of the road easier for yourself you put yourself into a position of driving with more confidence. To have driving confidence is important as otherwise you will drive erratically or hesitantly and risk being the cause of accidents. It is important when first spending time in a new place to familiarize you with the road systems before driving.
One of the major differences between California and the UK is that in California everything runs on a very logical "grid' system; most roads run north-south or east-west and if a road is one way then the next road along will probably be one way in the other direction.
My partner discovered just how difficult the roads on the Isle of Man can e when driving here for the first time - he got stopped by the police and breathalyzer due to having been reported for "erratic driving".
You need to be aware of how your mind works, and how driving in fact becomes habitual, because it is falling back upon habitual actions which causes accidents when driving in a different country. As you become more used to driving your brain begins to store patterns of behavior, and these get stored in your subconscious mind.
You eventually reach a stage of real driving confidence, such that you can more often get home and subsequently realize that you cannot even remember the drive home at all. Most people who decide to drive abroad are at this stage. They are comfortable and confident when driving; they don't have to think about how to drive - they just drive. Now you arrive in a different country and have to drive on the "wrong" side of the road. You have to think about driving once more, you have to pay considerable attention to driving, and instead of learning something new you are adapting a well-worn pattern of behavior.
It was clear to me that my new "pattern match" with driving in California was attached to the car and not to a golf cart. I had to learn a new pattern in the golf cart even though I had already learned a new driving pattern in the car.
A further observation I made was that each time I returned to the Isle of Man from California I tended to get into my own familiar car and slip into driving on the left with relative ease...but when I borrowed a friend's car, I really had to think about which side of the road I was meant to be driving upon.
This whole "driving thing" highlights how our brains store patterns of behavior in the subconscious mind, and how automatically we so often act.
Although I had altered my "driving on the left" habit to allow myself to drive confidently on the right, this deviation from the original pattern only extended to one particular car, and definitely not to a golf cart. And because my initial deviation from my original driving pattern was in a different car, this left a "confused" instinctive response when driving yet another different car; I was now in the Isle of Man and so the pattern match was to drive on the left, BUT I was also driving a different car, and my pattern match relating to different cars was to drive on the right!
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