why is it that england, australia, india, irland, and new zealand drive on the left but most of europe and america drive on the right?

Don't forget japan, they also drive on the left.

Theory is, to have your good eye on the apporaching trafic (for driving on the left) or for having your good eye watching your blind side (for driving on the right)

Or so I've been told, though I'm sure it's much simplyer than that.

Nah, it's from the old naval rules. If two ships are on direct course for each other, they should both turn left, the so-called yield zone, to avoid collision.
Where that rule comes from I don't know. I think that the Romans used to drive their carriages and horse on the right side, if there's traffic, as most of the world does today.

In England it supposedly stems from when people used to carry swords: when you draw your sword with your right hand it's covering the side of your body open to the road. Saves you half a second moving it to cover the other side after a draw.

And I thought ships were supposed to pass on the right?

[ 04-20-2005, 05:58 AM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]

somone toldme its when your riding a horse, you right arm has the sword to swing so you go on the left. the americans drive on right because of carrages and shotguns. the driver on the left and shooter [img]graemlins/shooter04.gif[/img] on the right. i think thats it..

[ 04-20-2005, 06:09 AM: Message edited by: burnzey boi ]

It's because the rest of the world has to be "different" from us Brits [img]tongue.gif[/img] . They decided that they didn't like our Imperial Empire and so, decided to be rebellious and drive on the right side of the road - just to spite us, and our car manufacturing... [img]tongue.gif[/img] [img]tongue.gif[/img] [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Here we drove on the left side until 1967, just one day they changed it to the right... amazingly not one accident is recorded that day... [img]smile.gif[/img]

i dunno the reason why, but it is something to wonder about.

What I know is that America like to do things differently. We use celcius they use fahrenheit. We use kilometer they use miles. We call football they call it soccer. I like to colour they like to color. /gg

Basically we either didn't get round to conquering that part of the world or they got all rebelious about being conquered and did it differently just to spite us :D

The sword thing might be right. Castle steps always spiral to the right?, i think, so people coming up cannot fight properlet, as the defenders were assumed to be at the top of the towers etc