This continued until the late s when large wagons became popular for transporting goods. Instead, in order 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!
These huge wagons were best suited to the wide open spaces and large distances of Canada and the US, and the first keep-to-the-right law was passed in Pennsylvania in , with many Canadian and US states following suit later. As most people are right-handed, the driver would sit to the right of the seat so his whip hand was free.
Korea now drives right, but only because it passed directly from Japanese colonial rule to American and Russian influence at the end of the Second World War. Pakistan also considered changing to the right in the s, but ultimately decided not to do it.
The main argument against the shift was that camel trains often drove through the night while their drivers were dozing. The difficulty in teaching old camels new tricks was decisive in forcing Pakistan to reject the change. Nigeria, a former British colony, had been driving on the left with British imported right-hand-drive cars, but when it gained independence, it wanted to throw off its colonial past and shifted to driving on the right in After the Second World War, left-driving Sweden, the odd one out in mainland Europe, felt increasing pressure to change sides in order to conform with the rest of the continent.
The problem was that all their neighbours already drove on the right side and since there are a lot of small roads without border guards leading into Norway and Finland, one had to remember in which country one was. In , the Swedish government held a referendum on the introduction of right-hand driving. Although no less than The day was referred to as Dagen H or, in English, H day. All traffic with private motor-driven vehicles was prohibited four hours before and one hour after the conversion, in order to be able to rearrange all traffic signs.
Even the army was called in to help. Also a very low speed limit was applied, which was raised in a number of steps. The whole process took about a month to prepare. In the video on the left, you can watch the actual switch taking place at 5 AM.
On 2 April Nigeria swapped sides and Ghana did the same thing in Furthermore, the fact that it would cost billions of pounds to change everything round was not much of an incentive… Eventually, Britain dropped the idea. Samoan workers are repainting road markings in Samoa had been driving on the right since it had become a German colony in the early 20th century, although it was administered by New Zealand after the First World War and gained independence in Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi wanted to swap sides to make it easier to import cheap cars from left-hand driving Japan, Australia and New Zealand.
Click here for a full list of all countries of the world and the side of the road each of them drives on. Click here to find out why the steering wheel is on the left side of the car in right-driving countries and vice versa. Press enter to begin your search. This became a law as part of the Highways Bill in I must point out that Napoleon was lefthanded, and so he used to draw his sword from right to left.
He imposed his soldiers to parade marching on the right. Therefore, all Napoleon's conquests were changing the way carts and horses used to go. From left to right. Commonwealth countries and other ones such as Japan, didn't change the way. It is not only the British who drive on the left, but also the Japanese, Australians, New Zealanders and others.
Why does everyone else drive on the right? If you know reasons for driving on the left or on the right , send an e-mail , please. Deutsche Version. Keeping left had really only ever applied to riding or driving.
Keeping to the right of the road was also seen as a way of defying the earlier Papal decree. Napoleon ordered his armies to use the right-hand side of the road in order to avoid congestion during military manoeuvres. The nations that resisted invasion — Britain, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russia and Portugal — generally kept to the left. The Netherlands changed to driving on the right in , but Dutch colonies in the Far East continued the old practices.
Denmark had not been invaded by the French but changed in Russia did not switch until Czechoslovakia and Hungary were the last countries in mainland Europe to keep left, only changing to the right following invasion by Germany in the late s.
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