💾 Archived View for jsreed5.org › log › 2023 › 202305 › 20230519-driving-in-england.gmi captured on 2024-06-16 at 13:04:17. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-05-24)
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I live in the United States, but this weekend the family have traveled to the UK to attend a wedding. I have visited other countries in Europe before, but not England.
We decided to rent a car for the duration of our stay. I've never driven a right-hand drive vehicle before, much less driven in left-hand traffic. Of course that meant that we, jet-lagged and very tired, had to drive to the inn with everything on the opposite side from that to which I'm accustomed.
I picked up the particulars of UK driving rather quickly. Important road markers are often painted directly on the pavement, which is a great help. Other signs and symbols are largely self-explanatory.
Much harder to sort out are the actual routes. Apart from the New England region, American cities are largely built on grids, but here to roads twist and turn in every direction. I can almost always figure out my way around in the US, but here I need a GPS.
I considered renting a standard-transmission car, but I have never driven one of those either (though I have played with "manual mode" on automatic-transmission cars extensively). I figured a foreign country with different traffic patterns was not the best environment in which to start learning.
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[Last updated: 2023-05-19]