[alfa] Why not left hand drive in the UK ?

[Alfisto@xxxxxxx]

Ever wonder why they drive on the "wrong " side of the road in the UK and in 
certain other countries? The following are the reasons why....

In the olden days, horsemen passed on the left when they encountered a 

stranger riding toward them. This way, their sword hand was free and near 

the stranger in case they needed to clang him upside the head. (Then, as 

now, most people were right-handed.)


For a while, horse-drawn traffic followed this tradition and kept to the 

left in most of Europe and the Mediterranean world. This way they could still 
salute with the right hand in their customary one-fingered style !


So why does all of Europe (except the British Isles), all of the Western 

Hemisphere (except some former British possessions in the Caribbean), and 

all of the Middle East drive on the right?


Napoleon decreed that his troops should march on the right side of the 

road, and instituted that rule for all traffic in the many lands he conquered.

See, Napoleon had soldiers all over, and they were always marching in and 

out of places. Following the British tradition, they started out by 

marching on the left side of the road. Columns of troops frequently 

approached from opposite directions and passed each other in the narrow 

roads of the time. The soldiers muskets were slung over their right 

shoulders, and the weapons of one column of troops would crash into the 

weapons of the other column of troops and everybody would get all tangled 

up. (Which would've been funny, but Napoleon didn't have much of a sense of 

humor. In fact, he was often rather short with people. Short!)


The obvious solution was to make the troops march on the right side of the 

road so that the weapons were on the outside edge of the road, where they 

wouldn't bang into approaching traffic. If all those men with weapons went 

to the right side of the road, EVERYBODY in those countries had to go to 

the right side of the road.


But Napoleon didn't conquer Britain, so the Brits stayed on the left, 

following their knightly traditions.


A London newspaper one April Fool's Day printed a story saying that, to 

further European integration, the U.K. was to convert to driving on the 

right. However, owing to the huge amount of work this conversion would 

cause, it would be phased in. For the first six months, the regulation 

would only apply to buses and taxis !

Graham Arlen
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