Live data from Hacker News

The only road in London where you have to drive on the right

mylondon.news

21–30 of 75 posts

Re: The only road in London where you have to drive on the right

#21
post #11

> There's only one spot in London where you'll have to drive like much of the rest of the world That makes it sound like Britain is the only place with left side traffic. 35% of the world population live in countries where they drive on the left side.

No it makes it sound like much of the rest of the world drives on the right.

Re: The only road in London where you have to drive on the right

#23

London will switch sides when America goes metric - i.e. never.

It would be way more annoying for LHT countries to change to RHT than to switch from US units to metric, have to change literally every road sign, street light, road markings etc in the entire country. Plus everyone would then be driving cars with the steering wheel on the wrong side for decades until the whole fleet got eventually replaced. Countries have done it before, but I think there's a reason not many countri…

And the US and various other countries (like the UK) effectively use hybrid systems for units for many purposes. Science and engineering in the US are heavily metric.

Re: The only road in London where you have to drive on the right

#24
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using total population is a bad metric considering India itself has about 2 out of 7 billion people.

they also don't drive on the left, they drive everywhere

> Left is right and right is wrong

one of cool road signs I saw years ago in Ladakh state on road from Manali to Leh. Funnily enough that 19h minibus trip sometimes went through valleys without any form of road, just used least uneven path. Not so funnily enough we had an obvious technical stop later when driver was banging with huge rock on some part of suspension for an hour, and luckily his caveman engineering worked well enough to get us moving again

Re: The only road in London where you have to drive on the right

#25
There are some spots in the US where you drive on the left, albeit for a short distance and the road is divided. Still messes with my brain. E.g., here in the northern suburbs of Detroit (W. Big Beaver going under I-75): https://www.google.com/maps/@42.5620634,-83.1581674,18z

Re: The only road in London where you have to drive on the right

#26

London will switch sides when America goes metric - i.e. never.

The US is on the metric system: The official definitions of US customary units are in metric.

For example: https://www.regulations.gov/document/NIST-2019-0003-0001

> After December 31, 2022, any data derived from or published as a result of surveying, mapping, or any other activity within the U.S. that is expressed in terms of feet shall only be based on the “foot” equal to 0.3048 meter (exactly), formerly known as the “international foot” in the 1959 Federal Register notice.

Re: The only road in London where you have to drive on the right

#27

There are some spots in the US where you drive on the left, albeit for a short distance and the road is divided. Still messes with my brain. E.g., here in the northern suburbs of Detroit (W. Big Beaver going under I-75): https://www.google.com/maps/@42.5620634,-83.1581674,18z

It's called a Diverging Diamond https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diverging_diamond_interchange

Re: The only road in London where you have to drive on the right

#28
Sometimes, rarely, you find a bit asphalt in Brazil where you have to drive on the left and often it is signalled as "mão inglesa", which is something like "English flow".

Recently I discussed with some friends the relative merits of LHT and RHT, and we came to the conclusion that LFT was better because you could drive and shoot with your right hand. So LHT is great for drive-by-shootings. Curiously, no alcohol was ingested during this conversation.

Re: The only road in London where you have to drive on the right

#29

London will switch sides when America goes metric - i.e. never.

Once all manufacturing is controlled by China, they could refuse to make cars with steering on the right or use Standard measurements, increasing pressure and eventually forcing the UK and US to switch.

The US drives on the right (which is the right) side. So why would the US switch? Its really just Australia, Japan, India and the UK that drive on the left. The other 190ish countries all drive on the right.

PS Your 240V electric grid works that way because when the US switched to 120V (in like 1900 or so), we sold all our old gear to you and you never switched. So now all your electric things cost more as a result and your electrical outlets will kill you. So your decision making on such things is suspect.

Post reply on HN