Life in the Fast Lane

For some years now, I have stated to all and sundry that I never wanted to drive in a foreign country.  Given our experience on the roads of Great Britain, I am even more convinced than ever that this is the proper attitude.

You must understand, as context for what follows, that I have over the years grown to dislike driving in my own country.  I feel like driving is probably the most dangerous thing that most adults do on a daily basis, and I'm convinced that we would all be better off if our society had developed around some other basis than the automobile.   So I am in fact somewhat predisposed to a negative viewpoint.

Stress

Yes, I know, the point of a touring vacation is not really to relax.  We've done Europe before, and Egypt, and we always need a vacation after we get home.  But there is a difference between trying to see too much in too little time and spending some hours every other day courting death at high speeds.

For one thing, the speed limits here are higher than in the States.  The motorways, equivalent to our interstates, are all 70 mph.  Not that they're marked, no that would be too simple.  The default speed limit is signified by a white circle with a diagonal black line, and you're just supposed to know the speed limit.  Of course, as we all know, a 70 mph speed limit means that the bulk of the traffic will be moving 80 mph.

The rest of the roads are by default 60 mph, unless otherwise marked.  There are some exceptions, I'm told, such as a lower speed limit that applies whenever the street lights are closer than 22 feet apart (as they would be in a village, for instance).   But by and large the roads are at least 60 mph.

But the roads aren't (with the exception of the motorways) any wider than a West Virginia two-lane blacktop.  We have wider roads in housing developments than the British use for main arteries connecting cities.  The cars here are in general smaller for good reason.

So there you go, hurtling down a two-lane blacktop with a white line down the center and it's dark in the day time because the trees at either side of the road are so close together that they meet overhead and block out the sun!

Then you see a sign warning you to slow down (to 30 mph or 40 mph) because you are approaching a village.  Suddenly there is nowhere to go, because there is a rock house on the left and oncoming traffic on the right.  Maybe two feet on each side (though it feels like less) unless oncoming traffic is a truck or a tractor, in which case your heart seizes up and you steer off until you can hear the wheel hit the curb and hope for the best.

Then you come around a blind curve in the village and a line of parked cars faces you.   It's not like there's room to park.  They're just in your lane and so you have to steer into oncoming traffic or stop dead (pun intended).

The Passenger's View

Even tougher than driving is riding as a passenger.  Remember, you're on the left side of the car, but you're not driving.  Instead you cower helplessly, watching the scenery whip by inches from your left side (or listening to branches hit the left side of the car and the wheels grind off the road).

Watch the scenery?  Careful, as navigator you can't look away from the road too long, lest you miss a sign and leave the driver defenseless in the face of a coming intersection or (worse yet) the dreaded roundabout.  No, like a Clockwork Orange you're pinned in the seat and forced to watch for your approaching demise.

Enjoy the ride?  Rather go for a walk in the woods in Bosnia.  Better to cower in the back seat until the worst is over.  But you can't!  You're the navigator.

Driving, white-knuckle experience though it may be, at least provides the illusion of control.

Peculiarities

Obviously the rules of the road are different in Britain.  Some of these differences are probably peculiar to Britain (and its colonies).

The left vs. right thing is actually less difficult than you would think.   Certainly we've all heard the urban myths about driving on the wrong side of the road and having a head-on collision, and certainly this happens on occasion.  But a simple mantra of "drive on the left" will help and after a day or so it seems second nature.

After all, the steering wheel is on the right side of the car.  The entire feel of driving is different and it is pretty much impossible to forget on that account.  Or it has been so far...

One fortunate difference between this experience and driving in Cyprus on a previous trip is the arrangement of the auxiliary controls.  We remember the Cypriot car as having reversed turn signals and windshield wiper controls.  Every time we went to turn a corner we would switch on the windshield wipers ("I meant to do that").  This isn't true here, which is quite a bit more convenient.

What I find really annoying are the bloody roundabouts.  These are what we would call traffic circles, and they replace innumerable intersections of various types all over England (though they seem curiously absent in Wales).

For low traffic levels they seem quite efficient.  If no one is coming from the right (already in the circle) you can just enter into the circle, where you gain the right of way, and whip out at the exit of your choice.  Of course, this assumes that you know which exit to use, and this is sometimes difficult to determine whilst the world whirls widdershins around you.

However, at high traffic levels the roundabout becomes a snarling mess.  The larger ones have two lanes and British drivers, used to the things, think nothing of passing the slower tourist driver within the roundabout.  But the clincher is the fact that the largest, busiest roundabouts have street lights to regulate the traffic.  I assume, perhaps without due basis, that this is because the roundabout simply doesn't work for high traffic volumes.

I class roundabouts in my mind with merge lanes on interstates and revolving doors.   Efficient, perhaps, as long as everyone is skilled in their use.  But almost no one is.

Watch sometime how people use a revolving door.  A line queues up outside the building and the first person enters the revolving door.  As the door turns, a person exits, opening up the next segment for use.

But the next person in the queue often leaves this segment blank, put off perhaps by the exiting person.  Instead, this segment revolves around empty, reducing the efficiency of the door by 50%.  The only place I have ever seen revolving doors used properly, with every segment filled ingoing and outgoing, is Chicago in the winter.   The people were motivated by the cold, I suppose.

Now imagine a revolving door running at 20-30 mph, with as many as six or seven entrances and exits.  The mind boggles.

In Summary

Buying a snack at Stonehenge, we chanced to talk to the woman behind the counter about driving in foreign countries.  She allowed as to how she had, and complained about the stress, arguments with her mate, and so forth.  Pretty much what we had experienced thus far.

She went on to talk about taking tour buses to Scotland and elsewhere as an experiment.   She waxed eloquent on the advantages, including the increased height (and thus increased visibility) of the bus.  Having just ridden past roadside shrubbery just high enough to block (presumably) amazing views of scenery from our car windows, I had been thinking the same thing.

But the real argument for a bus is the experience of driving on the wrong side of an exceedingly narrow road and having a bus come past in the oncoming lane, a terrifying experience for the tourist driver.  Well, really, given the choice, wouldn't you rather be on the bus than in the car?