How difficult it would be to move to left hand driving

JackieChan

We have embraced the EU,EURO and now pracically full metrification(litres,grams and metres) so what else is on our list of 'How do be a good European'.
One thing is moving to left hand driving.
How difficult would it be to make the change.
I appreciate that there are different aspects to it.
1)Is it physically possible given the existing infrastructure
2)Getting used to it.
3)Extra dangers of having a rhd car for left hand driving
4)The actually timing of when it changed over.

After driving in France bit during the summer(only about 7hrs) I found it easy enough to get used to driving on the left-although I felt I had to be more careful at roundabouts. Funnily enough I found it harder to revert back to right hand driving-it almost felt more natural to be driving on the other side.Has anyone else experienced this?

You could argue that it is a huge exercise with no rewards. Are there any benefits?
I know that in recent years a number of people have been killed due to tourists driving on the wrong side of the road.It may save some lives here, albeit some extra may be lost while people adjusted and made the ocassional slip.

JC

Alun

Apart from all the obvious problems, one of the hardest and most expensive to overcome would be motorway junctions that aren't completely "symmetrical", like the M7 / M9 junction and the one being built for the M11 / M50 junction. Not that there are many of those in Ireland (yet), but it would still be a royal PITA.

John R

Every single vehicle on the road would be unsuited for car owners/ drivers it would be a constant problem with overtaking and general judgement of lanes (it's not like the Irish motorist has exactly mastered this stuff with rhd car/rhd layout) for other road vehicles particularly busses/ coaches but also many trucks it would mean a complete fleet replacement or major modifications.
Second-hand values for rhd vehicles would go through the floor, exporting to the UK at below value cost would be likely and there would be a mass importation of lhd cars with uncertain pedigrees from the continent.

It would be very expensive to alter all the infrastructure for little or no benefit.

Far more Irish vehicles end up on UK roads than any other European country. Only if the UK changed over (which isn't going to happen) would it be even worth considering.

In short it would be one of the most stupid wastes of time and money ever.

mackerski

It looks like you've reversed your lefts and rights above, but that aside:

I learnt to drive in Ireland, driving on the left, sitting on the right, shifting gears with my left hand. I subsequently lived for some years in Germany and reversed all that in built-for-Germany cars. I now live back in Ireland, where I drive my LHD German car (though automatic) on the left. IMHO:

a) Shifting gear is one of the more fiddly things any learner driver has to learn. For a right-handed driver, you could consider it objectively easier to learn this in a LHD car. As a right-hander who learned to shift gear with the left, I had no difficulty changing over. I am aware of people who found the transition difficult in the other direction.

b) _Every_ road sign would need to be shifted.

c) Most road-markings would need to be re-done. This is crucial because...

d) ...I never found the adjustment to other side driving difficult. However, this is largely because every country's road-markings give good clues as to correct positioning. Do sloppy markings and you're knackered.

e) Changeover time and day are the least of your worries. Bloody hard, but doable. Sweden did it in the the 1960s, but times have changed.

f) Infrastructure is the big thing. Much of the Motorway network would be hard to adapt. Some partial interchanges might not work as planned (though some would). Trumpet-style junctions (as at Naas, northern end of M7) would be among the worst, since these are generally planned so that the tight curves affect traffic entering, not leaving the motorway. You don't want to see those flows reversed.

g) The benefits don't justify the pain. The biggest pain of the current system is suffered by people like me, whose steering wheels are on the wrong side. It's not so bad, you get used to it...

Dermot

mackerski

Alun wrote:

Apart from all the obvious problems, one of the hardest and most expensive to overcome would be motorway junctions that aren't completely "symmetrical", like the M7 / M9 junction and the one being built for the M11 / M50 junction. Not that there are many of those in Ireland (yet), but it would still be a royal PITA.

All movements on those two junctions would be preserved exactly in the event of a changeover - they are symmetrical, just not complete.

Dermot

raphaelS

It can be done in two phases to go smoothely, first all the odd plate numbers and if it is ok after few months, then, the even numbers...

Sorry!

I find interesting to know that they've done it in Sweden... the 60's aren't that far away.


Raphael

Alun

mackerski wrote:

All movements on those two junctions would be preserved exactly in the event of a changeover - they are symmetrical, just not complete.

Dermot

Hmmm, I'll have to think about that one ...

raphaelS

raphaelS wrote:

I find interesting to know that they've done it in Sweden... the 60's aren't that far away.

I find this page an interesting reading...:
http://www.starimage.co.uk/scda/reference/drive_on_the_left.htm


China changed to the right in 1946. Sweden, which had escaped invasion by both Napoleon and Hitler, switched from the left in 1967, after a two year preparation. The changeover was accompanied by an intensive road safety campaign and the number of road accidents dropped sharply after the change. Several British colonies, such as Ghana, have changed from left to right in recent years. This causes some problems with roundabouts, where the smoothing of corners to make a fast exit or entrance for traffic on the left side of the road makes an awkward turn for those on the right.

Raphael

Eurorunner

Its not going to happen any time soon. Whats more, it would cost a bloody fortune - i wouldnt want my taxes paying for it when theres kilometers of new road we need to be building.

Would be interesting if someone has estimates of what the bill would be but between conversions/advertising n' awareness/signage/spend on motorway junctions..........it must be a whopping figure.

Victor

In the modern era, I odn't think its practical

mackerski wrote:

since these are generally planned so that the tight curves affect traffic entering, not leaving the motorway.

Not quite. Uphill traffic should be leaving the motorway, downhill joining (to benefit from gravity) with the tightest curves at the slowest part of the road.

Capt'n Midnight

In fairness there was that time when the changed the direction people drove on the quays in Dublin, and there was the whole St Stephens Green thing too.

And the NRA are on a spend spend spend spree and the M50 and it's junctions will have to be redone anyway.

We will know by the 20th how good they are at changing signs and how good we are at changing behaviour !

But if we change over then we won't get those nice cheap jap imports.

mackerski

Victor wrote:

In the modern era, I odn't think its practicalNot quite. Uphill traffic should be leaving the motorway, downhill joining (to benefit from gravity) with the tightest curves at the slowest part of the road.

This is also true - and consistent with what I said. The gradient issue is often ignored, as at M50 Finglas and Ballinteer which are the "wrong" way around. For trumpet junctions (with the non-motorway on top to benefit from gravity), the slowest movement (the one whose traffic is most likely already to be slow) is the traffic joining the motorway, which is why you generally try, as at Naas, to reserve the 270-degree tight loop for that movement. Change sides of the road and you neatly negate that design benefit.

Dermot

GerardKeating

Alun wrote:

Apart from all the obvious problems, one of the hardest and most expensive to overcome would be motorway junctions that aren't completely "symmetrical", like the M7 / M9 junction and the one being built for the M11 / M50 junction. Not that there are many of those in Ireland (yet), but it would still be a royal PITA.

I would have thought the biggest problems would be our land border with the "occupied counties"....

Alun

GerardKeating wrote:

I would have thought the biggest problems would be our land border with the "occupied counties"....

Other countries with such land borders manage, such as Hong Kong - China. See http://www.brianlucas.ca/roadside and specifically http://www.brianlucas.ca/roadside/#bordercrossings for details.

Yoda

If Ireland did as Sweden did, carefully, it could work. If nothing else, iit would be an opportunity for most Irish drivers to actually learn how to drive. :-/

GerardKeating

Alun wrote:

Other countries with such land borders manage, such as Hong Kong - China. See http://www.brianlucas.ca/roadside and specifically http://www.brianlucas.ca/roadside/#bordercrossings for details.

Yeah, but historically they was little traffic over this border, and it is not exactly a very big border, with less than a dozen crossings.

The Clones-Cavan road crosses the border six or seven time in about two miles...

John R

A few interesting points about the changeover in Sweden from the link Alun provided:

Another curiosity was that <before the changeover> most of the cars running in Sweden were built for right-hand driving. That means that the steering wheel was on the left side. Even cars imported from Britain were built that way.

So most of the cars were better suited to the change than they would be here.

All traffic with private motor driven vehicles was prohibited four hours before and one hour after the conversion. In some cities there was no private traffic for 24 to 29 hours. Soldiers were called out to participate in work to rearrange all traffic signs." Malcolm Roe recalls that "the roads were completely closed, apart from emergency vehicles, for a day or two while changes were made to road signs etc. Then a very low speed limit was applied which was raised in a number of steps. The whole process, if I remember correctly, took about a month."

Jim West writes, "My first driving experience outside the UK was in Sweden where I arrived one Sunday afternoon on a ferry docking in Gothenberg. It was 3 Sept 1967 and I and my fellow traveller were unaware of the significance of the date. We became aware that traffic was not normal as we left the ferry terminal because all traffic was moving at 10 Km/hr or less. Many drivers were obviously confused, stopping to get their bearings, moving uncertainly between traffic lanes and attempting to make turns at familiar but now different junctions."

So not nearly as seamless as the popular "they changed it overnight" line would suggest. And although I was not in Sweeden in 1967 I am fairly sure that car use was nothing compared to Ireland in 2005.

BrianD

Looking at the map in the web site quoted abovem it appears that driving on the left is very much a southern hemisphere affair!

Crossley

Looking at most of the drivers on dual carriageways / motorways here you would think that a decision had already been made to drive on the right :rolleyes: