First Time Driving on the Left Side of the Road (Ep. 21)

Transcript

Drew (00:13):
Hello everybody and welcome to Travel Fuels Life Show. We share stories, tips and inspiration to help you live a travel lifestyle. I'm your host, drew Hanish, and I am back from my castles and Drams tour of Scotland and Ireland. I am energized, I'm happy I survived driving on the left hand side of the road. Yes, it's something I was really a bit intimidated about before I went and I wanted to do this episode because I was not finding good information out there before I went to get me in the mode or the thinking mode of how to handle this kind of a thing. I mean, you'd find videos of, I remember this one video actually. It was a woman and her husband, and they're going down this single track road, skinny little road, stonewall on one side and here comes a bus on the other side and they're screaming as they sneak between the two.

(01:13):
And I'm thinking that's not constructive for me. It's not helping me get comfortable with this whole idea or teaching me how to get along, what kind of things I should expect when I'm going to be driving on the left-hand side of the road. So first thing I want to tell you is I took lots of notes, I got some great suggestions of ways to handle things in this episode, and I got through my entire trip with absolutely no scratches on the two rental cars that I got. So I feel like that was a major accomplishment. Go in with the right mindset. Don't be thinking about, oh, I might get a scratch here or there. No, just go enjoy. Yes, these single track roads and all that sort of stuff. I'm going to help you kind of figure out how those work and how to get around and something to help you feel a lot better about.

(02:06):
This is the first 10 minutes of my drive we're a little bit crazy, but after that everything calmed down. I got into the groove of things and so I'm actually going to play for you that first 10 minutes of me in the car. That time when I'm trying to get my mind straight, I'm straightening my mirrors and that first moment that I get out on a Dublin freeway, and you'll see how frenetic it is at first, but then I quickly get used to it. So not everything went perfectly on this trip, but I mean I can't complain. In fact, I really found that I enjoyed driving on the left-hand side of the road. So here's where we're going to pick this up. I went to the car hire, I got the keys, I'm walking out to my car and lo and behold, I try to get

Speaker 2 (02:58):
In the side of the car. All right, so no cool points for me in this episode. It's definitely not a James Bond lifestyle moment, but I think you're going to find this instructive and it might take the edge off of that hesitation you have in attempting this. So let's check out my first 10 minutes on the road. I'm having to get used to these mirrors being backwards and I have to get used to my arm reaching for the gear shift on the other side. Oh, I'm so glad that I am practicing with an automatic because this could be a nightmare. Now, I was going to shift, but I turned my windshield wipers on. All right, that's not good. All right, now I got somebody coming, so that means I got to hurry up and do this. And they're just going to have to understand that I don't know what the flying rat's I'm doing at the moment.

(03:57):
Go ahead and go. Alright, so I got to get used to, the biggest thing I got to get used to right now is not turning the windshield wipers on when I want to go from reverse or drive or whatever. Now, so far I don't have any problems and I don't hear my little G P Ss and I'm going to have to hear my G P S because I'm keeping my eyes on the road as much as I possibly can. So you guys are going to get interrupted by my G P Ss. All right, so here we go. My first obstacle is pulling out of the car hire place, and so far there's arrows on the road. Now the guy who drove us over here on the in

Speaker 3 (04:45):
200 meters at the roundabout, take the third exit.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
So this is my first roundabout coming up, which means I need to go clockwise, not counterclockwise. All right, so far, no problem. And the guy told me, if you miss your turn, don't worry about it, just keep going around in a circle and you'll be fine. Alright, so far I have navigated my first roundabout without issues

Speaker 3 (05:16):
In 300 meters. Turn left onto swords road R 132.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
I like lefts. Lefts are not hard to navigate because it's just the easy as a right turn is in our neck of the woods. Okay, coming up on my next intersection, not sure which way I'm going, okay, it's telling me I'm taking a left. I like these lefts.

Speaker 3 (05:39):
Turn left onto Swords Road R 132.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
Okay, and just make sure you look to the right to make sure that there's no cars coming at you. I am now officially driving on the left hand side of the road

Speaker 3 (05:52):
Are 132 for 800 meters

Speaker 2 (05:55):
And everybody is staying to the left. So slower traffic stay left. I guess I'm going to have to take a right here in just a moment though. So now I'm going to pull on over in

Speaker 3 (06:06):
500 meters, turn right onto Old Airport Road.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
Oh, lane ends. Okay, well I guess I could have just stayed right where I was. All right, so far this is a divided highway, so not too tough. Now the thing about the M 50 is my car rental place actually paid is going to pay the toll. It's a toll sticker. And so take the next

Speaker 3 (06:35):
Ride onto Old airport

Speaker 2 (06:36):
Road. They said people used to get some horrendous fines because they would forget that they needed to do it. And so the car company just said, we'll just tack the cost onto your bill. So that's what they do. Okay, so now I got a green light going straight and a red light on. There's two stoplights here, there's three down and then three down right next to it. And the one that's on the left is an arrow straight and the one that's on the right has a red light. So this is a little different too. Having these side by side, every country can have some variations in how their signs work. Now I have an arrow telling me I can go to the right and then I have a blue arrow saying, make sure that you go to the left. Okay. So these little arrows are helpful, but as he said, it's also very handy to just follow people and get used to following people because they're going to do the right thing. And you are going to most of the time on a busier road have traffic in front of you. So I can tell you right now though, this feeling of being on the left-hand side of the car or on the right hand side of the car with traffic coming at me on the left-hand side is a little surreal at the moment. Yeah, freaking me out just a bit.

(07:59):
Apparently it looks like people can park in any direction on the other side of the road too. This is a cool little exit though. You're exiting right next to the airport. So I'm watching a plane take off right next to me. That's pretty cool. Alright, now I got people slowing down and backing into parking spots here in the middle of a road. Very interesting. Alright, so far. So far it's, but I haven't had to navigate a right turn yet onto another road. And I can tell you already that that's probably going to be my biggest challenge. The other thing that I heard was that, and it's spooky when you see a car coming down at you on the right hand side of the road, woo hoo, very spooky. But after a couple of them passed by, it's not too bad. So the cool thing is that these car rental places are outside of town and outside of the airport in

Speaker 3 (09:03):
500 meters, turn left onto our 180.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
This is going to take me straight onto the M 50, hopefully going in the proper direction. All right,

Speaker 3 (09:24):
Take the next left onto our 108.

Speaker 2 (09:29):
It's a little stressful. All right, now I have a yellow flashing arrow. What does that mean? It's about to turn or it's just saying

Speaker 3 (09:36):
Continue on our 108 for 800 feet,

Speaker 2 (09:38):
Keep your head on a swivel, I guess. Make sure you're looking to the right, because that's the thing you might forget. I don't think so though. They gave whoa. And again, traffic coming at me on the right hand side of the road down this road with no dividing line on it and it freaks me out just a little bit. Okay, I've got a roundabout coming up to get onto the highway and then I should be riding the highway for quite a distance and I'm going to go through that first toll, which is just going to capture my license plate

Speaker 3 (10:11):
400 meters at the roundabout, take the second exit onto the M 50 ramp to southbound.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
And then she said all the rest of the tolls are, oh, which lane should I get into? I'm going to stay on the outside lane I guess. I don't know. Oh, well this person is just sitting here at a green light and I'm not quite sure why, but they need to go. I thought I was the one that didn't know how to drive. Okay, so I need to go around this circle. It says I can stay in both lanes, which is good. I do not want to go northbound. I want to go southbound city, right? Yeah, no, I'm not turning there. So anytime you're driving in a new country and you're getting used to a new car, that's challenge enough. But also having to try to figure out how to navigate roundabouts can create kind of an issue. Alright? So as he said, just stay on the roundabout if you miss your turn. But so far navigation seems to be working for me and I think the person that's driving in front of me is more lost than I am.

Speaker 3 (11:27):
Exit the roundabout onto the ramp.

Speaker 2 (11:29):
Yeah, everything is good right now, although I see it, there is a stoplight on the roundabout. That's a first and a massive Ikea. All right, and now I'm in left in

Speaker 3 (11:45):
500 meters, merge onto M 50.

Speaker 2 (11:47):
Okay, success. Success. This does feel strange. Again, everything's in kilometers because it's a hundred. That's not miles per hour, thank you. Between Ireland and Northern Ireland and Scotland and pounds in weight versus miles and kilometers continue

Speaker 4 (12:15):
On M 50 for 10

Speaker 2 (12:16):
Kilometers. It's a little confusing because Ireland is part of the European Union. However, power plugs, they tend to follow the Great Britain. So I don't know, you really have to kind of focus when you're coming to these places. All right, and then I stay on here for nine kilometers and I'm on a freeway, which, and then I get on the end four. So I would say that this has been successful to this point. Honestly, having the traffic on the freeway on the other side of the cement barricade on the right, going the opposite direction is not freaking me out too much. So alright, now I got to get used to this car because I'm speeding,

Drew (13:16):
So I am happy to report that I did not get a ticket, at least as far as I know they can sometimes show up in the mail a little bit later on. But I seem to do okay on all of my driving and made it through unscathed the first day and all the way through, I mean I spent 14 days on the road, so by the end I was feeling pretty confident about my driving and was having a whole lot less issues in getting around towns and getting around on the highways and on those little single track roads that you have to deal with in Scotland and Ireland. So don't be discouraged if that sounded a little frenetic. Hey, your first few minutes are going to be a little frenetic, but it's going to happen. You'll get over it pretty quickly. Part of me thinks that as a solo traveler, that it would be an advantage to have somebody sitting in the seat next to me, a spotter who can tap me on the shoulder and remind me when I'm driving on the wrong side of the road.

(14:20):
I had a situation where I was doing a three point turn in Ireland on the back road, middle of nowhere. It had changed from a single lane road to a two lane road. G p s said, turn here. I wasn't paying attention, I kept driving forward, missed my turn. So I decided to pull into a little shop and do a three point turn out and come back on and just naturally went to the right side of the road. And I wasn't thinking about it until I saw a car coming at me from a distance and went, oh, what are you doing? Get over to the left. So a spotter probably would've said, Hey, what are you doing here? Not a good idea. And that would've helped get over those kinds of situations. So if you are driving solo, definitely keep your focus as much as you can along the way.

(15:15):
Remind yourself left, left, left after, every time you do something, and I'll give you some scenarios where I found myself forgetting to be on the left-hand side of the road in just a little bit and getting that automatic, I think is the best way to go. I went ahead once I got to Scotland, after driving in Ireland with an automatic for four days and them offering me a special rate to go to automatic, that was just better to go ahead and pay the extra and get the automatic. Sure, maybe after some time I'd get used to shifting with the left hand, but it's just one more obstacle that I didn't really feel like I needed to overcome. So keep that in mind. Try the automatic or the manual if you want to, but I think the automatic is really the way to go, especially if this is your first time driving on the left-hand side of the road.

(16:12):
And this is something I found really interesting for me. I think walking in a left-handed driving country was more difficult than driving because if you think about it, when you're driving, you are following people. And so you've got visual cues that are telling you stay over on the left-hand side, but when you're walking, you're just kind of free, free-forming it everywhere and you come to an intersection and if it didn't have that little print on the road that says look right, you probably would go into old habits and maybe stick your foot out in the intersection on a single lane road that you're going across and put yourself in danger. So it's funny, but again, after a while you get used to it when you're driving. But in walking it still was a little bit of a challenge, so be aware of that. Okay, so let's talk about prepping for your first drive on the left hand side, first thing you need to do is just get comfortable with the car.

(17:25):
Now of course you're going to forget, and it was almost comical how I kept reaching up on the steering column for the gear shift because that's where the gear shift is on a car if you don't have it down there on the side. And so that's just a natural reaction me, as long as I've been driving that the steering column is the next place I'm going to go look to shift the car when I start and I'm flipping the windshield wipers on. So you're going to make mistakes, you're going to look like an idiot from time to time. You can try to nonchalant when you open the wrong car door and act like you were just checking to make sure that nobody stole the passenger seat. But I mean, just get used to it. There's going to be times because you have a lifetime of training on one side of the car and you're just now adapting to something that is totally foreign to you.

(18:27):
So don't feel bad about that. And actually there's a good reason to not get frustrated or feel bad about that, and I'm going to cover that coming up in a few minutes. Also, the one thing that was a rough thing for me to get used to at the beginning was that rear view mirror. I'm not used to looking left to look into the rear view mirror. And then when I was doing the angle on the rear view mirror, nothing ever seemed right. So I ended up using my side mirrors a lot more than I use that rear view mirror. And believe me, you need the rear view mirror. It's going to help you in a lot of situations where you may have cars coming up in a certain area where you're not going to be able to see them as you're driving along, especially on a motorway.

(19:12):
So get used to that rear view mirror and it's going to help you out along the way. And the biggest piece of advice I can give you, especially in the early part of your drive is just relax. Just relax, know it's going to be weird for a while, but I mean the thing that really got me initially, as you heard was being on the right hand side of the car that close to the center line with cars whizzing right by my ear going in the opposite direction. It's unnerving initially, but you do get used to it. Now this next thing is just something you're going to have to overcome as you start driving. I did this a lot on the first day. I did it a little bit on the second day and I pretty much cured myself of it by the third day. And that is driving down the road and hearing, what is that?

(20:17):
Oh, I'm driving on the shoulder. All right, move the car back over a couple of seconds, go by the thunk. What am I doing? I'm on the shoulder. Okay, pull it over. Now by the fifth time, the thunk, the thunk unk, you start muttering things to yourself. Are you an idiot? What are you doing? Why are you driving on the shoulder stop. You have all this road over here driving down this motorway, you got plenty of room, now I'm going to go pass somebody. And of course there you have to pass people on the right. And as I'm starting to pass somebody by, I realize I'm scooching them off the road, I'm crossing into their lane. Why am I making my whole car move over to the left hand side of the road? It made no sense in my head and it was really starting to get on my nerves.

(21:08):
And then I realized as a driver, I am not used to being that close to the center line. And so you try to center yourself on the road, you're trying to center your body in the lane and that's throwing your car off into the shoulder. So you keep getting the th So here's what I did to overcome that because I knew I had to devise some kind of a scheme that made sense to me that I could follow. When you're looking out your windshield after you've gotten yourself into the center of the lane or maybe even hugging the dotted line on the right hand side, what I did was I started looking at where those dashes in the road were meeting my windshield at the bottom. And on the first car it was actually a little easier to line up those dotted lines with the front fender, the front right fender of the car and use that as my guide.

(22:17):
But in the second car that I got into, the dotted line actually worked better if it was coming into the bottom right hand corner of the windshield. And so I started using that as a visual cue for myself to make sure that I was keeping myself somewhere close to the center of the road without that center line without going over it or again, pushing myself over on the shoulder. And that little visual cue was really good for helping me stay on the road. I think the biggest fear I had was that I was going to get onto one of these back roads where they have a big stone wall on the left hand side of the car and you're just dragging the side of your car along that stone wall. So I didn't do that. I don't think you're really going to do that Anyway, I can tell you my first Airbnb that I went to, there were stone stonewalls on both sides of this dirt driveway.

(23:18):
As I drove up into there and my car had a little sensor that would go, beep, beep, beep, beep. Every time you got too close, it didn't matter which direction I went, that car was beeping through that hole entire drive. And I would say it was a quarter mile of stonewall on both sides with trees growing up and the roots coming out into the roadway. There were all sorts of little obstacles that I had to deal with there, but I never scraped the side of my car through the entire journey. And there were some times when I really thought I was going to do that. So one of the things that I thought was going to be an advantage for me maybe is that I'm dyslexic. So if I'm on the other side of the car and I'm on the other side of the road, but I don't really know right from left anyway, maybe that's going to be an advantage of some form.

(24:14):
Well, I am here to tell you it is no advantage. And the reason that it's no advantage is because when you get into a moment of uncertainty or panic, you start looking for visual cues as to which direction you should go because you can't think left, right, left, right, because you don't know what those are, you're just kind of lost. And so this was really a challenge for me. And in Ireland and Scotland, cars can park on either side of the road in either direction, so that visual cue is completely gone. And I'm telling you, that was big for me because there were a few times early on where my brain just scrambled and I had absolutely no idea what to do. So my first bad situation came on day one. Now remember, I've been flying overnight, I can't sleep on the plane. So I've been sleepless for 20 plus hours.

(25:21):
I fly into Dublin, I rent my car, I start taking my drive on the motorway, I'm hungry, I want to get something to eat. So it's an hour to my Airbnb. I go ahead and get my clothes and everything put up and then I want to go into town and get something to eat. So I go into this town called Tomore, and you may recognize that name from Tomore Dew, which the factory for that particular whiskey is in that town. Well, luckily it was a Sunday night and there weren't a lot of people out because I was about to go experimentally driving with absolutely no sleep and no food in my belly. And here's what happened. I go to the takeaway place, they call it takeaway, we call it takeout. Same thing go in. Part of me wants to sit down and eat there, but I'm reading up on the wall and I'm seeing takeaway menus.

(26:19):
So I go up and I order my fish and chips and then I look and there's tables over there and I said, oh, well maybe I'll go sit at the table. But while I was waiting, I started reading and it said, if you order takeaway, you're not allowed to sit at the tables. Great, okay, so I'm caught, get my food, go back out to the car and I just in the car while these college kids keep walking by staring at me like, dude, why are you eating in the car? And so I'm eating my food, I get done and now it's time to pull out. So on the left hand side of me, I have a dumpster so I can't see around it. On the right hand side, I've got a van with no windows. How did I end up in this situation? Alright, so now I'm backing up this car.

(27:14):
I don't have really good sight lines in, but I'm trying to get my eyeballs out the back window to see if there's any cars coming. Well, guess what there are, but they're down the street a bit. So my brain kicks in, normal instinct says, pull out and go, just go. Your butt's already sticking out in the road. You might as well give this a shot. So I hit the gas and I'm gone. Well, I'm so focused on get out of here that I don't realize that I'm driving in the right hand lane until all of a sudden I'm in a roundabout and I'm like, wait a second. Now I'm totally discombobulated. I have no idea what's going on. And when you get to these roundabouts in these little towns, there's not really a well-defined center. It's kind of a lump in the road. And I think I kind of hopped over that lump for the first exit I could find.

(28:13):
And so I exited out on the right hand side. So here I am, right side of the road. I'm just completely messed up and I'm thinking the people behind me have to be laughing hysterically at me if I haven't hit them already, which I hadn't. And so I worked myself back over to the left-hand lane and oh, and I mean it was a leap of faith move over the left-hand lane because I was so discombobulated that and I couldn't remember that the rear view mirror was up on the center to the left instead of to the right. It was a mess. I drove back calmly and tried to keep myself together. As I got back to the Airbnb, the woman met me at the door, we chatted for a couple of minutes and I told her what happened and she laughed and she said, you'd be surprised.

(29:08):
We've had people who have come here to stay and after they go out and drive for one day, they say, do you have availability for the rest of the week? We had other plans, but we don't want to leave here because we don't want to drive anymore. It's too crazy. And I thought, that's not going to be me. That's just not going to be. That is the worst of it. I've learned something from this and I'm going to be able to move on from it. So that's what happened. Just know your instincts are backwards and if you get into a situation like that, just breathe, relax and stop. Don't charge into something that you're uncertain about. I would think that the people there would rather drive around you with your butt sticking out into the road than to have you ram into them because you're doing something stupid because you're just trying to react off instincts that are completely backwards.

(30:13):
So I survive that one. Tell a more, please welcome me back. I would love to go back there someday and hopefully my driving will be a million times better. Now let's talk about some of those things that lull you into driving on the right hand side of the road. And I just call this a bad habit. When you are driving along on a long stretch on a motorway, this is one of those situations where you need to be cognizant of where the passing lane is. The passing lane is to the right. So you should be driving on the left hand side of the road when you're on one of these motorways and you'll get to a point where you need to pass somebody. And it's amazing how, if you're like me, unlike a lot of us drivers and you're used to driving in the right-hand lane until you need to pass coming over in a left-handed world and starting to drive in that right-handed lane to pass somebody, you sometimes forget to go back out of the passing lane and get back over to the left.

(31:16):
So that's not one of those dangerous situations, but it's just be kind to people and drive in the lane that you should be driving in. If you are the slower driver, which is the left-hand side, now something that will get you into trouble. And as you heard earlier with my three point turn, anytime you're doing an odd maneuver, say you have to do a three point turn or you're pulling into a driveway or you're backing out of a driveway, there's this sense of pride that comes after you make the move that you pulled it off and your brain will stop being present and you'll start thinking about that particular thing and you'll all of a sudden just go back to instinct, which puts you on the right hand side of the road. So what I did was I kept saying to myself, whenever I would get into one of these odd maneuvers, left, left, left, and that helped some, having a watch, being dyslexic, having a watch and being cognizant of that, keeping my eyes on that going, okay, yep, that's left.

(32:22):
I need to be where my watch is. That helped me out as well. Now talking about being present, one morning I got frustrated and I got frustrated. I was driving through the highlands. Now this was day six of driving on the left hand side of the road and I was going to hunt down a castle. And when I got to the castle, it was closed down. I wasn't able to go, I was frustrated. I pulled out of the place, I was muttering to myself. It was a, I don't remember what day of the week it was. I think it was a Saturday morning. There was nobody else on the road. And I'm driving and I'm driving and I'm muttering to myself and I'm driving. I come up on this hill, and you'll find this a lot, especially in Scotland, Ireland where they have these huge hedges to the side, you can't see over them.

(33:17):
And I had a cliff on the other side and I'm rounding this curve and there is a truck coming straight at me. I don't know how, but my brain knew I was on the wrong side of the road and I just wheeled that sucker over into the proper lane and smoke was coming off of the trucker's tires and whatever he had for breakfast was probably sitting on the seat of his car by that point. I mean that was not a good situation. Seriously, I was very close to a head-on collision in that scenario and it was all because I was in my head. I was playing things back in my head that I didn't need to be playing back in my head. It wasn't serving me in any way. It was actually to my detriment to do it because having no focus on the road at that particular moment had put me in a very, very dangerous position.

(34:14):
So make sure that when you get frustrated, you cool down, just realize there's nothing you can do about it and get out there and again, think left on that left side of the road and be smart. If I'd have had somebody riding along with me, that was that one situation where I can point back to and say, having a passenger, I wouldn't have gone five miles down the road on the right hand side of the road, somebody would've realized that I was making a mistake at that particular point. So it's good to have that buddy system and have somebody to help you out if possible. But if you're on your own, just stay focused and don't let that kind of thing get you into trouble. Another thing that will lull you into moving to the right hand side of the road are these single track roads.

(35:04):
And you're going to find these a lot in Ireland and Scotland and single track roads are just what they sound like. It's just a single lane that you're driving down and it can go on for miles. I hit one stretch where it was 10 miles of just this one lane road that I'm going down and for some unknown reason I have a tanker truck coming at me. And in Ireland that sucks because they don't have these things called passing places like they do in Scotland. You just have to hope for a driveway or something because there's no real shoulder there for you to pull off on and you end up backing up a long way with this tanker truck because the argument between you and the tanker is probably going to be won by the tanker who has a much bigger vehicle and a harder time reversing.

(35:50):
So the single track road thing, I get it. Honestly, I don't get it. Let me just be honest. This is a big country. Both of these are big countries with wide open spaces with millions of acres for sheep and you can't do a two lane road. I went out to this place on Isle of Sky called the Ferry Pools Worst road I've ever been on from a standpoint of it's a single track road and it is a popular tourist destination and everybody was leaving when I was going in. So I spent that whole entire drive pulling off into passing places and letting groups of cars go by. It seemed like I was never going to get down the road and get to this place. But alright, there's a reason for single track roads don't exactly know what it is, but you're going to have to deal with those.

(36:48):
And what happens is after you've been on one for 10 miles and you come off of it, the first thing you're going to do is you're going to go to the right because you've just been mesmerized by this big long drive and you go back to your instincts again. It's muscle memory. And so the way I trained my muscle memory, especially after my big nightmare almost crash on that head-on collision through the highlands, is I started saying left to myself a lot more. And what I would do is as I was going past one of these passing places, I would just kind of tick my hands to the left, not really moving the car to the left, but just kind of creating muscle memory for myself by flinching my muscles towards the left, like I was about to turn the steering wheel. And I did that at every single passing place that I got to.

(37:42):
And what it did was it trained me to start driving on the left and always reacting to the left. And it's amazing because after that I did not drive on the right side of the road again and I drove for another seven, eight days and I did not make that mistake. And maybe it was the life or death situation that I put myself in that reinforced that and I started taking it seriously. I will tell you that, yeah, I took it seriously, but it was fun, it was different. It was something to talk about. And so there was a little edge of flippant attitude there that could have gotten me into trouble. And all that flipping attitude just disappeared after I just got into a big accident. So keep that in mind, the muscle memory thing and saying the word left in your head, those can be very, very helpful for you.

(38:44):
Alright, so let's talk a little bit more about those single track roads. I think this is important, not really as much for left hand driving, but just in general, something to keep in mind when you're driving in places like this in Scotland, there's all sorts of rules and passing places, things to help you out. In Ireland, it's a bit more of a free for all. They don't really have any defined rules except this one that kind of scared me when I got the little piece of paper from my car rental place and it said, center lane driving, what is that? Oh, there's center creep. People will drive in the center of the road. And I had to ask them, I said, is this truly a thing? And they said, yeah, yeah. Well, you're driving all these little narrow roads, you don't want to keep endangering your side mirror because you're driving and trying to keep in your lane so people will kind of ease out into the center of the road until another car comes.

(39:44):
Well, that's one of those things that you need to be aware of because if you're driving too fast around some of these curves, or the worst is when you come to one of these little stone bridges that's one lane and you're driving and all of a sudden you have to take a left turn to get into it and you realize there's a car coming from the other direction, it could be a mess. So this is one of those things where you need to relax and you need to understand also that people in these places deal with this all the time, and so they are into negotiation. When you come to a situation where say the road is going to narrow, you may both choose to slow down a bit and go slower by each other, or if you're in a little town and there's cars parked in the lanes and this happens, which by default turns this into a single lane road, then you have to negotiate with the traffic coming from the other direction as to who's going first and who's going second.

(40:55):
And it creates a friendliness. In the US we don't really have these kinds of situations and everybody's in a hurry, so there's a lot of aggressive driving that goes on. So keep in mind that over there, whether you're on a narrow road or a single track road, that people are friendly and they will negotiate and nobody wants to mess up your car or their car. So they're going to do their best to try to get through the situation unscathed if possible. Something else to look out for are a lot of blind corners. I told you those hedges will be right up and you'll have to nose your car out to be able to see down the road that you're crossing. It's a little hairy, but you'll run into that. And you'll also find places where you have blind hills and I was on a island in Scotland called Isla, and I'm driving out to go to a distillery and as I'm driving down this little single track road, there must've been 10 different blind hills that I went over and you just slow down and you pray that somebody's not coming from the other direction because there's not a lot of room for you to stop.

(42:16):
And so you're just kind of going over these hills eyeballing to see if you see the roof of something headed towards you because it's very possible that that could happen. I got very lucky I didn't have any of those situations come up, but just be careful when you're on these roads, you're in a foreign country, you are having to adopt their rules and get used to the way their roads are set up. So just take it easy. Okay? Now there was one situation. I was on the aisle of sky in Scotland and I was driving on this really small single track road and I decided I just saw this amazing view, this little town called Uig. It's U I G as I'm coming over this hill and I looked down this port and there's beautiful green, lush mountains and it just was in little houses.

(43:12):
It was a picture perfect scene. So I pulled over into the passing place, which you're not supposed to do, and I parked for just a second. This was a road in the middle of nowhere and I figured it wasn't going to bother anybody and I kid you not. I got out of the car, I hadn't seen a car for hours on this road and here comes a car just as I'm ready to take a picture. Hey, all right, so I can get back in the car and I start driving down the hill. Well, the hill is two lanes, but that's being generous and you're going down again with this stonewall on the side of you and a cliff on the other side. But in this particular case, there were these posts on the side of the road and they were looking very unfriendly to the person who'd be driving on the other side.

(44:03):
And I come around the corner and here comes a bus. I mean a big bus. Now I wasn't driving very fast, he wasn't driving very fast. We had time to negotiate, but there was no room. So with no room, what are you going to do? Well, I'm looking and I know the last passing place I had was way up the hill and I would be backing my car way up this hill and Lord knows somebody's going to be coming down this hill sooner or later. So this is just going to be a calamity. And the bus driver is looking at me like You're going to let me go. And I looked at him and I just waved my hands at him knowing he's probably got a passing place, he's got to have one right behind him. Well, it took him a couple of seconds and then he backed this big bus up full of passengers and he just inched backwards and I inched forwards until we got a space wide enough that I could get through and then he could continue up the rest of the way up the hill.

(45:06):
So that was one of the situations where it kind of worked out, not a big problem. There was another situation where I was going out to where the film Skyfall was filmed and there was, if you've seen the movie, the mansion is out there and it's the middle of this big valley. So I'm driving a single track road to get out to this spot and there's not a lot of room on this road as you're going out, got to the spot, took pictures, started coming back. As I come back, I pass this long stretch with no passing place. I'm about to round a corner and here comes a car at me and I'm looking at the woman and I'm thinking, you're going to back up. So we were sitting there and we sat there for three, four seconds. She's not moving, she's just looking at me.

(45:58):
I put the car in reverse. I didn't turn on the windshield wipers and I started heading backwards and I drove backwards a quarter of a mile to get to the last passing place. She waited, then she drove past me, then I drove past her, I rounded the corner where her car was and there was a passing place. She could have gone three feet backwards and gone into the passing place. People don't be that way. That was really uncool. And I don't know if this person just didn't know how to put a car in reverse or what, but that just, you need to use common sense. You need to be courteous and get through those single track roads as best you can. Now, this is the thing that I hear the most from people. It's about roundabouts and some people here call 'em traffic circles. Those little whirlys you get into, you're driving along and all of a sudden you have to slow down and you have to merge into this roundabout to get to the next road that you're going to.

(47:08):
Europe is full of them, Scotland, UK full of 'em. You're going to run into 'em all the time. And then I hear people saying, holy crap, what do you do when you get to a roundabout? Here's what you'll find out about roundabouts. Most of them, the ones in little towns, those can be a little hairy sometimes because sometimes you're driving and you're in a roundabout, you're like, how did I get into this? I didn't even see the markings to let me know I was in, because you're so busy looking at all the other cars that you're trying to pass by who've parked in the middle of the street. So it can get a little bit hairy sometimes when you're in a small town. But all the other roundabouts that I came to, they have a little blue sign with an arrow pointing to where you need to go.

(47:55):
So you just follow that. And to be honest with you, it'd be really hard to screw up a roundabout. Any of the large roundabouts like that, you're not going to go the wrong way. First of all, there's traffic already on the roundabout in most situations, and so you can see where the traffic is going, but the other is you're bending into this circle and you're bending to the left and you're on the left hand side of the road going to the right. At that point, that would be a very bizarre move and you would feel completely wrong about it. So it's not that tough. The thing that's tough is when you see a stoplight at a roundabout, then you're like, okay, I'm not getting it. But I think that usually used for roundabouts that take in a lot of traffic. So you don't find that a whole lot, but something else you'll run into that will get you into some trouble with roundabouts is when there's too many of them.

(48:57):
I was driving in Elgin, Scotland, and it's not that big of a city. I was going to look at the Elgin Cathedral and I was excited about that. And I'm driving into town and I kid you not, I must've gone through 15 roundabouts. It's just one after another after another, and you get fatigued. It's like you're going, I know I need to look right, I need to look right, I need to give them the right away. And then all of a sudden you're like, damnit another roundabout, and you get in your head again. You stop being present and next thing you know, you're charging into a roundabout without having looked to see if anybody's coming. So don't get yourself into that situation. It's very easy to do and you just have to be aware of it. The other problem with roundabouts is that, again, as an aggressive driver, normally I'm driving towards a roundabout.

(49:49):
G P s is telling me, get in the left-hand lane because sometimes you have to be in a particular lane and the road markings will tell you, but your G P s will also tell you which lanes you need to be in. And so G p s is telling me, get over into the left-hand lane, but there's a car over there. So my first instinct is gas it and get past him. You don't want to gas it going into a roundabout, that's just not a good move because if there's traffic coming from the right and you're speeding through there, you've got no way to stop. So make sure that you relax and the first thing that you're going to do is you're going to let that go past as you slow down and merge in behind him. That's the best way to handle that kind of a situation.

(50:34):
So watch that fatigue. It can get you into trouble and roundabouts. It's just going to be one of those. But think about it this way with a roundabout, if there's cars in front of you, you're just going to follow the cars in front of you. It's just going to feel natural after you do it. I never had trouble with any roundabouts after that first crazy incident. Now, the one thing that I never got over in Scotland, and I told you this about how unnatural it feels to be sitting on the right hand side of the car and be that close to the center line. Well, when you're on a narrow road driving 60, 70 miles an hour and all of a sudden a bus comes flying towards you and there's a stonewall on the other side of you. Yeah, it's a leap of faith bar none.

(51:31):
And you'll, I talked to somebody about this and it was funny when she said it because I was thinking the exact same thing when I was doing my own driving. She said, it's like you'll be driving through there and you're just like, something's going to hit me. Something's going to hit me. No, no, no, no. I'll be okay. I'll be okay. And it's just like that last second when you whizz by and that bus goes by you and you didn't hit anything. You're like, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. And these cars will be whizzing by you. And I'm like, how do these rear view mirrors stay attached because it feels like everybody's going to knock my rear view mirror off. So I think it's just an optical illusion. I don't know that you're really that close. And I talked about the problem of kind of leaning off to the left.

(52:18):
I don't think I ever, never heard my car beep at me and tell me I was too close to the side when I was on any of these roads where I thought I was going to knock my mirrors off. So that tells me that maybe my instincts in this particular situation are actually serving me and keeping me from getting too close over to that side. So I was fine in most cases. The last day coming back from Campbelltown, Scotland, I got on this twisty turny road and I had a tailgate behind me. And it was annoying because I knew this is not a great place for you to be tailgating me. And normally I would slow down and let the person pass me at the first opportunity, but there just wasn't an opportunity for this to happen. Well, lo and behold, we get to this part where the road narrows and here comes a bus and I got Joe behind me, just right up my tailpipe.

(53:15):
What do I do? Well, what I did a lot was I would hit my brakes and try to slow down to time out where whatever obstacle was on my left would be either before me or after me by the time the bus came by so I could kind of jerk the wheel over to the left a little bit to make sure that I didn't get hit. So in this case, I got nothing that I can do. I slammed on the brakes. It's all I could do. And of course, he had a slam on his brakes behind me and he hit the horn immediately. He was upset, and I just hit the horn too. I was like, screw you buddy. No, actually I was much more calm than that. I didn't really say anything. It was just like, yeah, you're getting what you deserve back there, but thank you for not hitting me.

(54:05):
Also, tailgating is not a really smart idea. In situations where you're driving on roads like this and do let people by if they're starting to get on your nerves, if you can possibly do it, I probably should have just kind of slowed down and just let him go and almost stopped. Just let him around me. He was putting both of us in a very bad situation. So I hope this is all helpful information for you. And before I end this thing up, I want to get a few final suggestions out there, some thoughts that I think are important for you to take along with you when you do this driving. And don't let anything I've said. I know I talked about some precarious situations. I want to talk about those because in hindsight, they're fun. Yeah, maybe the head-on collision would not have been fun, but it woke me up.

(54:57):
It was a lesson. It's something that helped me really get a focus and do this thing the right way. So don't be dissuaded by anything I'm saying here. I'm just trying to give you some stories and tips and things that are going to help you understand where you can fall into some issues when you're doing this kind of driving. So as I said earlier, driving when you're tired, not a great idea, you're going to make bad decisions or your mind's going to be wandering and you need to have some focus when you're doing this driving. Another thing that you don't want to do is you don't want to drive impaired. One reason is in Scotland, they have dropped their blood alcohol level to 0.03, which means you don't really have to finish that shot and you are over the limit. So they are serious about it there.

(55:46):
And for good reason because while I was in Isle of Sky, I heard this really sad story about a couple from Finland who went out drinking, got into the car, they were driving down the right hand side of the road, came over a hill and head on collision with a young girl that was coming home from work. It's not something that you ever want to see happen, and there's no excuse for drinking and driving over there. Yes, I did a whiskey tour. No, I never drove. After I drank, I always made sure that my bed and breakfast was within walking distance or I could take a cab to it. It's so much better to handle things that way. Or if you're going to the distillery, they have driver's packs. They know they don't want to send people out on the road with whiskey in their bellies, so they will actually send you out.

(56:38):
Some of 'em will give you everything that you would've tasted. Some will just give you a sample, whatever it may be. But it's a really cool thing. And it's all about keeping you from being impaired while you're on vacation, while you're enjoying things and keeping you from making stupid decisions and driving on the wrong side of the road, which can easily, easily happen. Drive without the radio. I did this quite a bit actually. I think I was just really enjoying the drive and the beautiful scenery there. And so I never really felt the need to flip on the radio. The scenery was entertaining me quite well, thank you. But if it helps you, turn it on. But G P Ss was just about all I listened to for a little while while I was driving. And then I just enjoyed the scenery around me and some good tips for getting started.

(57:33):
I would watch people while we were at the airport. I would watch where the bus or the shuttle was driving us, and I would try to visualize along with what he's doing, where he was going to turn next, how he was going to execute that turn, just to kind of get myself in the spirit of things. And before I left, I went on Google Maps and I went to the street view and I would look at roads that I was going to drive down. And again, I would visualize myself at a spot on the left hand side of the road taking a right hand turn and how I would pull that off. So I think doing a little bit of that visualization can get you a little bit more comfort with the whole concept of driving on the left-hand side of the road. And remember that most people are going to be understanding you're going to do stupid stuff.

(58:24):
I was told actually by the shuttle driver, if somebody honks at you, honked back. And that's what I did in my one situation where that actually happened. I felt very proud of myself that I only got honked at once. Well, I think the guy that I was going to head on collision with probably would've hit the horn if he had time to even think about it, but he didn't really have time to think about it. So have fun. Don't be afraid. It's something you should experience, and I think you'll enjoy it when you do it. You'll definitely feel like you've accomplished something by the time you get home. Well, thanks everybody for listening to another week of Travel Fuels Life. And if you want to have a little conversation, you're a little hesitant, maybe about this left-hand driving thing, hop out to twitter.com/travel fuels life and you can ask me any questions that you'd like to about it. I definitely want you to be comfortable with doing it and I really appreciate you checking out the show this week. I will have episodes coming up specifically on Scotland and Ireland. So wait for those. And until next time, have a great week. Safe travels and thanks for listening to Travel Fuels Life.