quote:
Originally posted by dance girl:
UK drivers are far more aggressive than they are here in Canada.
That's as country drivers in Britain say when they drive in London

The way they drive is intensely annoying to Londoners. Fact is, in London and other big cities in Britain, you are
expected to push in and drive 'aggressively'. If you didn't, the traffic would seize up because you'd be stuck waiting all day and holding others back in the process.You have to position the car and push in to the traffic so that it's obvious that you want to come in: then other 'aggresssive' drivers give way.There is abundant politeness and courtesy during this.We get used to this and also look out for anyone in a particular hurry and try to accommodate them: it might be us next time. Dawdling, on the other hand, will lead to robust complaints

We work on the basis that if we don't let the other drivers push in then other drivers will start refusing us too, then where would we be? Proof of this was when London's busiest junction, the enormous roundabout at Hyde Park Corner, had no traffic lights. Everyone pushed in and the traffic flowed. When the lights were installed it was years before the position was as before: it took endless permutations of phasing and the use of very sophisticated computers to constantly monitor the traffic and adjust the lights before we got to the flow we had pre-lights.The old way, of 'aggressive' give and take, worked that well.
I have to drive under both left- hand and right- hand regimes as well as the other one ( In Ireland. There you drive in the middle ).The only problem is that I'm bound, inevitably, to reach over the wrong shoulder, to get the seat-belt, once in France and once in England, every trip

For some reason that still happens even though I've long stopped opening the driver's door for passengers or getting into the front passenger seat and wondering where the steering wheel has gone

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A bigger danger is the different rules for driving. In France, for example, you must give way to anyone coming into your road from a road on your right. That applies quite regardless of how minor their road is. They might pull out of a tiny lane on to a big road but they still have the right of way unless there is a plain roadsign to the contrary.(There seldom is)
It is far safer to drive the appropriate vehicle for the country concerned than to take your own.Once you are in a left hand drive car you automatically adjust to driving on the right.If you take your own car, sooner or later you forget to drive on the correct side
