The Straight Shift with The Car Chick

Driving on the Wrong Side of the Road: My Wild UK Adventure

• LeeAnn Shattuck, The Car Chick: Your Car Buying and Repair Expert • Season 2 • Episode 118

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Summary

In this episode, The Car Chick® shares her experiences driving in the UK, highlighting the challenges and joys of navigating on the left side of the road for the first time. She discusses her personal reflections on her trip, some unusual driving challenges and the politeness of British drivers. The conversation covers various aspects of driving culture, including roundabouts, road signs, and the beautiful scenery of the UK. The Car Chick also shares her visit to Stonehenge and her thoughts on the different cars available in the UK, concluding with insights on driving protocols and the importance of courtesy on the road.

Takeaways

  • Driving on the left side of the road can be fun!
  • British roads are much narrower than American roads.
  • Roundabouts improve traffic flow and reduce congestion.
  • UK road signs are less cluttered than in the US.
  • Stonehenge is a must-visit historical site.
  • Different cars in the UK offer unique driving experiences.
  • Driving culture in the UK emphasizes courtesy and patience.

Resources

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CML-l97Mujg

www.CarChick-TV.com


You can view a full list of resources and episode transcripts here.

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Copyright ©2024 Women’s Automotive Solutions Inc., dba The Car Chick. All rights reserved.

LeeAnn Shattuck (00:00)
Hey everyone and welcome back to The Straight Shift. Today's episode is going to be a little bit different and I hope a whole lot of fun for you because I'm taking you across the pond to the United Kingdom. I just got back from vacation and checked off three huge bucket list items including driving on the wrong side of the road. That's right, right hand drive, tiny roads, double-decker buses and more roundabouts than Starbucks in Seattle.

Before we get rolling on that, I want to give you a quick reminder that you can see this adventure on YouTube. So check out my YouTube channel, carchick-tv.com, and you can watch the full UK driving experience episode. And while you're there, please subscribe to my channel so you can get more great car adventures like my Shut Up and Drive series, great tips, and you know, the usual shenanigans. All right, let's get into it.

Before I hopped on that plane to the UK, a few important things happened that I need to tell you about.

The first is good news and that is I got my online mini course, How to Buy a Cheap Used Car. And by cheap, mean anything less than $20,000. Don't get me started. That online course is now available along with a companion course that you can either buy separately or it also comes free with the cheap used car course. And that is the Car Care Survival Kit, all about car maintenance, 101 demystified so you don't get screwed by your mechanic.

So you can check those out on my website, TheCarChick.com. I crammed to get those done before I left for the UK. Whew. And I did it. The other thing that happened that is not so good news is that my 80 year old mother, who this was our bucket list trip that we've been planning for a year and a half. She had to back out of the trip. She was just not feeling well, having a lot of pain,

and she just couldn't go. So I cried for a little bit, but I very much respected her decision and it was the right decision for her. I think she would have been miserable on the trip. I had to rearrange some things at the last minute, and I made some changes that would make the trip a little more special since it was just gonna be me and my husband, David. So one of the things I did was I changed the hotel from just...

your typical Holiday Inn Express, which we got for the mobility factor for my mom to a beautiful manor home. It's like think Downton Abbey, but on a smaller scale, just stunning. And we also downsized the rental car. So let's get into talking about that. So picture this. I've just landed in Heathrow, London's humongous airport,

off the red eye from the United States. I am jet-legged, I'm hyper-caffeinated, and we get into this wonderful transport vehicle. It was a great Mercedes minivan. So we did get to ride from London to Southampton in luxury. And let me tell you, that is a fantastic minivan. Mercedes really needs to bring those to the U.S. I'm gonna do a whole podcast on cars that you can get in Europe that you can't get in America,

that I would really like to see here. Our nice driver drove us to Southampton. We got to see the beautiful countryside and just relax. And then he dropped us off at the rental car place in Southampton.

Now I did make one of the mistakes that I swore I wasn't going to make because that's why I had my friend Doug Hofer on the podcast a couple of weeks ago about renting cars. So if you haven't checked that one out, it's well worth it. But I still did not realize just how small of an airport Southampton is. It literally has two gates. So needless to say, it does not have a plethora of rental cars to choose from.

And unfortunately they did not have the Peugeot that I really, really wanted to rent. In fact, when we arrived, they didn't have anything but Volkswagens. It had a manual transmission and they said that I could bring it back the next day and swap it out for a different car that would be returned later that night. So I'm like, okay, that's fine.

At least I get to experience the manual transmission shifting with my left hand, which was interesting. And so we started on our little adventure to find our hotel. And it was just really interesting. So, you know, I can drive a manual. It's all I've really ever driven. And I drove it left handed shifting from the passenger side of the car when I was little. My dad taught me that way, but it was a lot easier doing it as a child because

all I had to do was shift. I didn't also have to work the clutch and the gas and the brake and steer and figure out where the heck I'm going and make sure I was not on the wrong side of the road. So while my brain is screaming, my God, we're going to die. ⁓ We did make it and it was very interesting, but yes, I did stall it a couple of times. However,

I don't think that was entirely my fault because the clutch on that Volkswagen, it was a T-Roc - it was absolutely terrible. And that car was really big for English roads. We don't think of that as being a big car. It's like literally considered a tiny SUV by U.S. standards, but I was not convinced that the road was actually as wide as that car. The roads in England are just

so tiny. It's fine when you're on the motorway, that's just a normal highway, but the regular roads are so small. And that explains why they have nothing but little cars over there. I think literally a mid-sized car is like the equivalent of a Toyota Corolla sedan. They just don't have a lot of big vehicles over there. And I would not even want to attempt to navigate even a mid-sized three-row SUV that we have here in the States

on the English roads. It was crazy. And you can check out some of the ⁓ crap moments that we had driving the rental car around these little bitty roads in South Hampton where you've got brick walls over here, curbs over there, hedgerows growing everywhere. They literally just paved over dirt roads and cobblestone roads from the old times. So these were carriage roads. These were horse trails. And they just, okay, cars came along,

let's throw down some asphalt, but nothing else really changed. So it's much more exciting and entertaining driving. But one of the advantages of that is it makes drivers a lot more cautious, a lot more polite, and you really have to pay attention or you're going to run into somebody or something. It's just not going to be pretty. So that was what I was really

the most impressed about in the UK. And I'm talk about what I liked and what I disliked. And that dislike list is very, very small. But one of the things that was just so amazing was how nice and polite and courteous British drivers are. And not just while they're driving. The British people are just very, very courteous and polite. And maybe it comes from a history of, you know, curtsying to the king and whatnot,

but every single person we met was just delightful. So that was a refreshing change. But on the roads, you have to be courteous because a lot of times the roads are literally only as wide as one, maybe one and a half cars, whether it's because that's just how wide the road is or because you have cars parked alongside

either side of the road, making it super duper narrow. If you have cars coming toward each other, somebody is just going to have to yield. In Britain, they call it "give way" because it's just so much more polite than the word yield. And so there seems to be a very cute protocol around this. Very often, it's whichever car kind of got to the open space first gets to go first and the other

person just pulls over and waits for them. If you get there at the same time, I really think it's based on the Law of Lugnuts. Now, if you are not familiar with The Car Chick's Law of Lugnuts, I will refresh your memory. In the U.S., I apply it to the rules of right of way on our roads here. So whatever your state or federal law says about which car has the right of way in any given traffic situation, like get a stop sign or what you're merging.

That is superseded by the Law of Lugnuts, which states that the car with the largest and or the most lug nuts just has the right of way. And that seems to be how they do it in England as well. The larger vehicle, you just let them have the right of way, especially if it's a bus. Buses are at the top of the Law of Lugnuts food chain in the United Kingdom. And so they should be because they have these fantastic double decker buses. You're not officially in England unless you see a double decker bus.

But it was just so refreshing that everyone just was very patient. And even in the roundabouts, nobody was honking, nobody was running over each other. Everyone was just very polite. People take their turns. When they merge onto the freeway, they actually know how to merge. It's amazing. They get up to speed, they look to see

what cars are already on the road. They find an open space, of which there are plenty, you know, unless you get into a road construction situation. Now, I'm sure in the busier cities like around London, the traffic can get a little bit hairier. But from talking to other British drivers, they say, you know, even in London, yeah, it's crazy. You know, there's cars everywhere, but everyone is still for the most part, very polite. They let each other merge in. Everyone takes their turn and they communicate well

with their signals or they just give a little hand gesture. Hey, I'm going over here. It's just amazing. There's just not the road rage and the rudeness. I did not see a middle finger, even though I probably deserved one a few times. I never even heard a car horn, not one single horn for two days. It was absolutely unbelievable. It was almost like there were adults

behind the wheel of every car.

So let's talk about those roundabouts. I know that is what most people absolutely freak out about when they think about driving in England. And we have started implementing them a little bit here in the US - we have a few in Charlotte, they are making more. And I couldn't be happier because roundabouts

are the single most brilliant invention in traffic engineering in the entire history of the universe. You don't have to worry about a lot of red lights, although they do have red lights at some larger traffic circles to control the flow of traffic into them, which is really brilliant. It's kind of like some freeways in the US have those as well, but there's no gridlock. You're not sitting there waiting forever to get that left turn signal.

It's just smooth, continuous flow of traffic. But you do have to know what you're doing and understand the protocol of these traffic circles, especially when you have multi-lane traffic circles. Most of the traffic circles that we have in the U.S., at least in the Charlotte area, are just single lane, and people don't even understand how to use those. But in England, you can have them to where there are two lanes or three lanes or in some places like London, even four

lanes and there is a specific protocol for how that works. If it's just a single lane, it's very simple. You give way when you come up to it and you look and you see if anyone is coming because people who are already in the circle have the right of way. And when there is an opening, you accelerate and merge in and then you signal

when you get to your exit on the traffic circle, because there might be two exits or three exits or four exits, I even saw one with five exits. So then you signal when you're getting off, just so everybody knows, and it's very simple. But when you get into multi-lane traffic circles, this is where it gets a little funky. The outside most lane is for someone who is going to be getting off at the very first exit.

But if you want to go to the second exit or the third exit, you get in this middle lane or one of the other lanes. They actually tell you where you're supposed to go. So you really have no excuse unless you're not paying attention. But if you are going up the second exit, you might get into the second lane.

and you go from a little more to the interior of the traffic circle and go around so that you're not in the way of the people who are getting off at the first exit. Or if you're going to the third exit, you stay in. So when you get to where your exit is, you're coming up on it, then you use your turn signal and you look and you make sure there's an opening and then you change lanes, so that then you're in the outermost lane

when it's time to take your exit at the traffic circle. You have to really look and pay attention and watch your mirrors, but it works. And as long as you use your turn signals, which granted not every British driver does, but I saw more turn signals than not. They apparently know they come free with the car there too. And it was just so easy. The only struggle that I had was figuring out which exit I needed because the GPS was a little bit laggy.

And so I was trying to figure out what the GPS was telling me and then how does that translate to the road and then looking for the street sign because they give you a sign when you're coming up on the roundabout that shows you exactly what it looks like, what shape it is and where the exits are. So if you can get a glimpse of that, that's helpful. So my husband, David was not only my cameraman, but he was also my navigator.

He was watching it and we decided not to really listen to the GPS lady and just look at the map. And so he would tell me, okay, we're coming up on a roundabout. It's a four exit roundabout. You are taking the third exit. So once I knew that, then I was able to just focus on getting into the roundabout properly, getting into the right lane, following the right etiquette,

using my signal and navigating around it. It was so much fun. I absolutely love them. And you know what? If you miss your exit, guess what? You just go around again, just like you should here. It's not that big of a deal. Now I never missed my exit, but there were a couple of times when I got off too early and then had to find my way back and then go the right direction. So there were a few little navigational glitches, but for the most part,

it was all good because I did not hit anyone. I did not run over anyone. I did get close to a couple of curbs.

However, I would argue that I was not nearly as close to the curbs as David thought I was because as the passenger, it really does look like you are so much closer

than you really are. So I think some of his panic moments were not necessarily justified, but I totally get it. So don't blame him one bit. He was a fantastic navigator and a great passenger and cameraman. One of the other things that I really liked about driving in the UK, when we were going to Stonehenge, we were on the motorway a lot. And the scenery, of course, was gorgeous. When you're driving up the freeway, pick one, any highway in the US,

there's fricking billboards everywhere. And they just mar the landscape and the skyline. And then when you come up on the exit signs, they don't just tell you, there's a hotel here. There's food here. There's gas here. No, they have to list every single business with their logo.

You can't drive up a highway in the United States without being bombarded with advertising. It's no wonder we're distracted when we drive. There's way too much going on. And in England, you don't have that. You have the signs but they're just very simple. And they say eat.

Sleep Petrol. That's all you need to know. You don't need to know specifics like, ⁓ I can find some place to sleep here. I can get some food here. I can put some petrol in my car here. It's so nice. And you don't have the billboards anywhere. You'll have these nice historical signs that tell you, where you're going, something cools over here, something cools over there. We've got an English heritage site over here.

But everything is very, very subtle. So you can just focus, one, on your driving and two, on these absolutely beautiful, beautiful landscapes. And the sheep, there are sheep everywhere. It was so much fun. Like in the US, when you're on a road trip and you go cow, here it's like sheep. Although there were some cows too. But another fun game we played, I don't know if you remember the game growing up called Punch Bug when you're on a road trip, especially with a sibling,

and you see a Volkswagen Beetle and you punch them and they're like, Punch Bug! We created another game called "MINI!" the United Kingdom as there should be. I think in two days, I probably saw at least 200. So we started playing that game of who spots the Mini first.

I won that game of course, because I am extra sensitive to the silhouette of a Mini Cooper. But in David's defense, he was also filming, navigating, making sure I wasn't on the wrong side of the road and not hitting anything. So he had his plate full, but I still won. Another great sign they have is as you're coming up to your junctions,

there's a sign on the side of the road, it's blue and it has three diagonal white lines, then two white lines, then one white line. So it's like a countdown to your junctions. Like, ready, three, two, one, exit. It's very much like the braking zones on a racetrack, those markers there. So it was very familiar to me and I found it very, very helpful because when the GPS says, in 800 yards, do this.

I don't know what 800 yards is unless I'm watching a football game. Give me a break. But those were really, really helpful. And they have some very interesting and fun signs over there, some of which I never quite got what they were. There's one that's a T and the vertical line of the T is white and the horizontal top to the T is red. And I think that refers to an intersection where you can't

see squat, like it's a blind corner. And there are a lot of those in England. So I think that one is warning you that when you get to this intersection, be extra careful because you can't see shit coming.

They have these things called restricted zones over there. And that genuinely does mean no stopping, no parking, no stopping, no pausing, no nothing. I think if you stop there, your car will spontaneously explode. you're just pay attention to those and don't do it.

There's another part of the road that you're not supposed to stop on. And that's when you come up on crosswalks. They have what they call zebra crossings or zebra crossings. It's a crosswalk for pedestrians, but several feet before and after the crosswalk, there are these zigzaggy white lines, hence calling it a zebra crossing. What that means is that is also a signal to cars, don't stop in this zone.

It creates kind of a neutral zone, a buffer zone for the pedestrians so that when you see a pedestrian in a crosswalk, you stop further back. You don't get four inches from them as they're trying to cross the road. It's courteous, It's polite,

it's protecting the pedestrians. Some other fun signs when we were driving down the road, there was a reindeer sign. It looks similar to our deer crossing signs, but it did have antlers, I'm guessing it's just the type of deer that they have over there, but it looked like a reindeer crossing sign, which I thought was really fun.

We finally got to Stonehenge. It's about an hour and 15 minute drive, depending on traffic, but traffic was perfect. We were driving there on a Thursday, so it wasn't totally crazy, but it was just absolutely amazing. just, you start driving on the freeway and all of sudden just like,

rising up on the hillside, you come over this crest and there is Stonehenge. It's literally just right there because, you know, it's been there for thousands and thousands of years and they just decided to put the A303 highway right next to it. So of course traffic slows down at that point because everybody's going, ⁓ like that is a reason for rubbernecking right there. It was absolutely stunning. So...

I can't really even describe how incredible it was to be there. Those of you who know me well know that I'm very sensitive to energy. So what I felt there was just incredible. It was like nothing I have ever

experienced and just seeing something that is so old and still so mysterious and part of our human heritage that we still don't entirely understand. It was absolutely spectacular. And like, how the hell did they even build it? Because those rocks did not come from that area. They were brought in from Wales, which in a car is a couple hours away. But like, how did they actually do it? Rolling them across the countryside several thousand years ago.

It was absolutely wonderful and absolutely amazing. So when we were finished at Stonehenge, we went back to the car park, which is what they call a parking lot. I like the term car park because it makes sense. The cars park. Hey. So we kind of geeked out over all these wonderful little European cars that you can't get in the United States. There was a Vauxhall Corsa. There was a Cupra, which is a very specific brand

that most people have never even heard of. And I will definitely talk about that in the podcast that I dedicate to all these amazing cars. There's little Fiat Panda, there were modern MGs, there were Renaults, there were Citroens, and of course, our little Skoda Scala. That was the car that they gave us that morning in exchange for that crappy Volkswagen. And the Skoda Scala was a wonderful little car.

It was an automatic because they didn't have any with a manual transmission in stock. Again, very small rental car agency. But I was actually okay with that because I'd gotten my jollies figuring out how to shift with my left hand on the first day in that Volkswagen in between figuring out where we were going, the navigating, making sure I stayed on the correct side of the road and navigating the roundabouts.

Actually having one less thing to worry about was not a bad thing at all. So I did not complain about the Scala being an automatic. The Scala is just this little four door hatchback, a tiny little station wagon. It's funny because over there it's considered a mid-sized family vehicle. You know, here it's like literally the size of a Corolla, but it was a nice car.

I can't tell you how smooth and easy it drove. The driver safety aids were not intrusive. They did kind of nudge you a little bit. And if you got way too close to something, they would be like, Hey, you know, you're a little close over here. But they were not obnoxious about it. Like the Volkswagen was. The Volkswagen was freaking out and panicking, more than my husband was when we were driving down the tight roads. So I really liked it. And it had a giganamous boot. Cause of course that's what they call the trunk,

and we could get all of our luggage in there, of which we had quite a bit. The seats were comfortable. It was just a really nice car. I would have one of those as a daily driver if I had to commute in traffic every day. It was so comfortable and easy to drive. Nothing fancy, very simple controls - once I found the start button, which is underneath the steering wheel and on the side, of course, between the wheel,

and the door. So like, where is this thing? But you know, once I figured all that stuff out, you know, modern cars, it was really fun. So I would have a Skoda Scala if they would let me here in the United States. It was just amazing. Overall, the driving experience there was absolutely fantastic. It was a challenge, but it wasn't nearly as difficult as I thought it would be.

But that's because I trained for it. And I think that's important if you are going to another country, even if they have left-hand drive cars and drive the same way we do, the laws are still going to be different. The signs are going to be different. Even the traffic lights can be different. And that was a cool thing in England. When you come to a traffic light you get your red, amber, green, just like you do here.

However, the light doesn't just go from red to green. It goes red, then red amber, and then green. So it's like at the drag strip. It's kind of a Christmas tree type of light. So I call that stop, start your engines, go. Now that might be because most of the cars there are a lot newer than you will see here. I didn't see a lot of really old cars over there.

So many of them probably had that stupid start stop technology. So maybe that was an indicator like, okay, now I got to put my foot on the gas to wait for my engine to restart and then I'll go because there's a lag. But I'd like to think it may be a throwback to the racing tradition. So anytime we got to do it, especially when we had pole position right by the light, it was like, ooh, ooh, ooh, ready, ready, ready, go. So we had a little bit of fun there, but that was a difference than what you have

in United States. So if you are planning a trip to any other country, be sure you learn what the rules of the road are, what their signs mean, and what the protocols are. Because I never would have known what those zigzaggy zebra crossing things meant. It means I shouldn't get too close to the pedestrians. The one thing I didn't like is that the center line that divides the lanes going different directions is white. It's not yellow.

And that wasn't particularly helpful to me. I kind of wish that were yellow. That would make a little bit more sense. Now they will often make the curb line yellow. Like, Hey, don't get over here. Like for some reason it's, they really feel the need to warn you about the curb more than the oncoming traffic. I don't know, but that is one thing I would change. But again, it was something that I had learned ahead of time. I had studied the protocol for the traffic circles. And the way I did that was I found a great YouTube series

by a gentleman who is a driving instructor in the UK. He teaches teenagers how to get their driver's license in the UK. So I learned from a properly trained driving instructor and it was so helpful because I was not stressed about the traffic and how to navigate a roundabout. I was only stressed about where the heck am I going? So it made things so much easier.

And I also watched a lot of YouTube videos from the first person driver standpoint, just to get my brain and my eyes used to what it looks like when you're driving in a right-hand drive car on the opposite side of the road. And I just watched those over and over again, the way I watch film of race tracks when I am training for a race. So that was actually really helpful. And thank heavens for YouTube. There's everything out there, but that is a recommendation that I have if you plan to drive in any other country.

There are so many things that I got from this trip to England that I think that we need to adopt

in the U.S. and not just the roundabouts and the cool traffic lights with the start your engines stage, but just the courtesy. Everything was just calmer and more respectful. I felt safer. I did not witness a single traffic accident, not a fender bender, no horns, nothing. We didn't even get into stop and go traffic

until we found a construction zone, because of course, road construction is the one universal thing around the planet. But even that wasn't too bad, because people still managed to merge and change lanes and exit the freeway when they needed to. It was amazing, because everybody was being courteous and paying attention. So as Americans, we need to just be more patient, just in life in general. And I am very guilty of that. Patience is not generally one of my strong suits.

Be kind. Use your blinkers. Remember, they come free with a car. You don't have to treat every traffic merge like it's a competition. This is funny coming from me, right? Because I think everything is a competition and I'm a race car driver, so everything's a competition. But I don't look at that way anymore. And I had started not thinking about it that way a long time ago. But when you're just out on the roads, yeah,

I still use race craft - still maneuver in and out of traffic because that's what I'm trained to do. And I do it partly for my own safety reasons, but I'm also a courteous driver. I will let people merge. Please use your signal. You're much more likely to have me be courteous if you use your signal, but we're all just trying to get to the same place. We're all trying to get to work in the morning. We're all trying to pick up our kids. We're just all trying to get to where we're going. And if we think about that,

more collectively. Like it is a group effort. It's a team effort for all of us to get to where we need to go safely, alive in one piece without damaging our cars. Think about how that could change driving in the U.S. Think about how it could change traffic. Think about how it could lower our insurance rates for crying out loud. But just that

courtesy and the paying attention to where you're going and paying attention to your driving.

I would move to the UK. Honestly, maybe someday I will. I will retire there. It was just a phenomenal experience. And driving on the opposite side of the road is not that difficult, people.

You just have to prepare for it. Now, if you, again, if you want to see all this action, just check out the video. I will put the link in the description below, or you can check it out on my YouTube channel, which you can get to at carchick-tv.com and check out all my videos there. And don't forget to check out my new online courses, especially if you know someone who is going to be in the market for an inexpensive used car coming up. They can take advantage of all of my knowledge and methodology.

Thanks so much for listening, folks. And again, drive safely. I'm out of here.