Driving on the right and road positioning problems.

elsmandino

It is really odd, isn't it?  I have no problem driving in the fast lane or on the other side of the road if there is a contraflow.

However, put me on the other side of the car and on the other side of the road and my head struggles with the "wrongness" of it all.

mjn

Driving more miles per year on the wrong side of the road than most people do in the UK, I don’t find it an issue.....until i hired a LHD car! Oh my, it was like I didn’t have clue how big the car was. I was nervous as hell, especially as i put £2k down on credit card for damage and the car had only a few hundred KM on it!

elsmandino

Exactly that same position as I was in - a virtually brand new Polo and they also took a hefty old deposit for damage.

Furthermore, we noticed four additional bits of damage that were not recorded on the contract that we signed.  Once in particular was sneaky - the previous driver had badly scraped the bumper and then repaired it with Tipex.

Thankfully, we pointed out everything before driving off as we might have been stung for quite a nasty bill.

From experience, I would now definitely recommend that you get the person on desk to physically walk round the car and write down every single flaw.

davidjohnson

Can be difficult though. We arrived late in the evening and the car rental place was on a side road with no street lighting. The guy behind the desk did a walk around using his phone to illuminate the vehicle

hyperfish

I did this reversing a LHD in a car park.
In Springfield, doh.

                                                                       

elsmandino

Out of interest, was that a hire car and (if so), how much did they charge you?

hyperfish

Yes it was a rental. Didn't cost anything as I had paid for full insurance.

LV426

....which is a really good idea.

davidjohnson

Everyone is probably aware, but you can get really cheap annual policies that cover the excesses on rental cars.

zeppelino

We do this. Think it’s £30/year or so.

But as to the issue at hand, in addition to what I said previously, it’s totally alien driving on the other side. Only thing that doesn’t change is pedal placement. First time driving abroad on the right, I kept grabbing the door bin. It’ll almost never be natural, not that driving is natural of course.

The first time I drove a hire car, it was an auto Camry and I’d never driven an auto before. Thankfully it was in New Zealand so the transmission was the only thing that threw me!