Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to brain junk. I'm Trace Kerr.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: And I'm Amy Barton. And today we're going to be discussing the right side of the road to drive on.
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Oh, you are going to make so many people mad.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: Perhaps we'll just have a historical discussion with no judgments.
[00:00:22] Speaker A: Okay, cool.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: We probably won't, but we could.
So about 30% to 35% of the world's drivers are left side drive. More. I expected it to be more. I kind of had this idea that the US drives on the right and everybody else is like, you screwballs, and they're all on the left, but actually 65% to 70% of the world is right side drive like us.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: Oh, and when you say right side drive, that's the driver is in the middle of, I mean, like, to the inside of the lane.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: The driver's seat is on the left side of the car, and the car drives on the right side of the road.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: Yeah, I've never done the opposite, unless I've been like, on a country road and we swerve over the other side and we're like, we're in Europe.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: That's right. Or you're dodging potholes. We probably all spent a fair amount of time on the wrong side of the road.
Yeah, me either. I've never had the experience of wrong side driving.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: Or is it the right side driving?
[00:01:26] Speaker B: I always wondered too occasionally see a right drive vehicle here in the US because it's been imported. And when I say right side, a right drive, I mean the driver's seat is on the right side of the car that we would consider a passenger.
[00:01:39] Speaker A: Seat, because your postal delivery people are often.
[00:01:42] Speaker B: They're right drive.
[00:01:43] Speaker A: Yeah, they're over so they can get to the mailbox, which is on the side of the road.
[00:01:47] Speaker B: Yes, but that makes it much more challenging with the spatial reasoning of you are driving on the right side of the road and you are at the far right side of the car. So you as far away as you can get from the other people that you're interacting with in traffic in every way.
[00:02:03] Speaker A: So, although I've always thought, like, that would be safer for the driver. But there must be a reason. Are we here for you to tell us the reason?
[00:02:11] Speaker B: We are?
[00:02:12] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:02:13] Speaker B: So in Europe, the formalization of this dates back to about Napoleon. And in the US, you hear Henry Ford get credit for this, but this actually predates Ford by quite a ways and is pre revolution. So we're going to go back and review our prairie history. We all remember the conest, the Conestoga wagon, if you don't just give it. It's, you know, the prairie schooner. We all remember the prairie schooner and all the like. What was the Disney special with the. I'm gonna have to look up.
[00:02:44] Speaker A: You can look it up.
[00:02:45] Speaker B: Yep. I have the Internet.
What is the video?
[00:02:50] Speaker A: When you say the Conestoga wagon, I see the little green pixelated wagon from the video game when they're like, you died of dysentery.
[00:03:00] Speaker B: Yes, that's exactly. It's a big version. So the prairie schooner is the small family size. This is the sedan.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: Oh.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: The conestoga is the semi truck of the prairie era. So we're talking 17 hundreds. The first reference I'm looking at. I'm looking up the Disney reference. It's actually windwagon Smith, and it's a silly symphony. Oh, and the saga of wind wagon Smith came out in 1961, and it looks like it's on YouTube. You can look it up, but it's this guy who sails his prairie schooner across the land. That's a very weird side road we're going to come back to. Why do we drive on the right side of the road now? Thank you for joining us. Okay. Conestoga wagons in the 17 hundreds. December 31 of 1717 is the first reference to those. So they've been around since quite a while, and they developed and were used to transport lots of trade, and they'd have this big load of product to take back to a city like Philadelphia. And that is where some of our first traffic laws and our first America's first major highway was created there, the Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike road, which opened in 1795.
[00:04:17] Speaker A: From wagons.
[00:04:19] Speaker B: From wagons.
[00:04:20] Speaker A: Okay, I know that makes sense, but, like, it doesn't. That doesn't compute for me.
[00:04:26] Speaker B: Well, the reason for it is because with the Conestoga wagon set up, the controls were on the left side, so it's a left drive vehicle. The driver sat in the left side. And so in order to see oncoming wagon traffic, which could get heavier because you're headed into a metropolitan area to deliver and get money for the things you traded, it became the practice that they would drive on the right. So then when. Because they're on the left side, so you're closer to seeing oncoming traffic, and it's easier to navigate your vehicle among other vehicles.
[00:05:02] Speaker A: Huh.
[00:05:02] Speaker B: It became a rule written into the charter of the first highway that all traffic had to stay to the right, like the Conestoga wagon. So, like, this is working. Let's not mess with it.
[00:05:13] Speaker A: Yeah, we don't need everybody just willy nilly, deciding where they're going to be.
[00:05:17] Speaker B: No, no shenanigans all over the road. So 1804 New York also dictated traffic to stay on the right. Oh, no. So Philadelphia, then New York. So by the time that was 1804 for New York, 100 years later, when Henry Ford unveiled his Model T in 1908, driver's seat was also on the left, like the Conestoga wagon he just rolled with that format. I'm not sure how intentional that was, but the result was they're like, you know, this is working in Philadelphia, in New York, so it really popularized it. Right.
[00:05:51] Speaker A: Because there were some cars that I'm thinking of, like, early, early, early cars that, like, the steering wheel was kind of in the middle.
[00:05:57] Speaker B: Yeah, they had some really interesting setup. I think there's one in the Campbell house where. Which is a museum here in Spokane, where the driver sat, like, in the backseat, and it's got this hand control, and it's wild looking.
So that's the US history. It dates back to that 1700 and that Lancaster, the Philadelphia Lancaster turnpike, and then was reinforced, I would say, by the Model t as vehicles became more and more on the roads.
[00:06:27] Speaker A: Huh.
[00:06:28] Speaker B: So should we talk about France?
Oui. If you had to pick an era in french history where this might have occurred. Do you have an idea?
[00:06:37] Speaker A: I was just thinking it's. I have no idea.
[00:06:41] Speaker B: Beaver. La revolution.
[00:06:43] Speaker A: Oh, did you need to have the right side of the road, the correct side of the road for the guillotine?
[00:06:49] Speaker B: Make way. That is. It is. Oh, what's the word? The fancy snobs and the. It's a class issue. It is a class issue. Fancy snobs. Yeah.
I am crushing it with language today.
So Maximilian Robespierre, who was the fellow known for the reign of terror, he dictated that everybody should drive on the right. But the way this came down was that the wealthier classes would traditionally drive on the left side of the road. In France, it was a cultural convention. The carriages and people on horseback that could afford it were left side of the road. Pedestrians and poor people were on the right side of the road. So during the revolution, I'm sure you can imagine that some wealthy people sort of made themselves look a little shabbier and sort of meandered over to the right side of the road. And so Robespierre said, we travel on the right side of the road. You're all equal. So for right drive in, France is an equality issue, or at least it started out as one. Yeah. It became really unfashionable and dangerous to drive on. The left side of the road there.
[00:07:56] Speaker A: For a while, it's like liberty, equality. Right side of the road.
[00:08:01] Speaker B: That's right.
Yes. So we get down to Maryold, England. Our friends on the left, they're like.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: We'Re not going to do it that french way. They have snails over there.
[00:08:14] Speaker B: That is exactly a factor. The France, you know, every war in history, every other war, was between France.
[00:08:22] Speaker A: And Britain, pretty much.
[00:08:24] Speaker B: And so that. That is a little bit of a factor. You people, we're stand on the left. The bigger thing that you read in varying sort of permutations, but largely, it's that Britain is a different sized country with different. They're not huge like America. You're not driving thousands of miles to get to somewhere. And so they did not have these industrialized wagons. They had family size and small carriages and horse riders. So in their traffic, it made more sense to them to stay on the left because you'd be waving. Potentially, you'd have a friendly joust or a sword fight with your right hand. So it's for sword fighting.
[00:09:03] Speaker A: Oh.
[00:09:06] Speaker B: Which I like a lot.
So. But swords and high fives and I don't know. Do you suppose they high five back then? They probably.
[00:09:14] Speaker A: No, there was not ye olde high five.
[00:09:17] Speaker B: No. But there were cordial greetings and waves and potentially sword play, probably less casual jousting. I don't think that's probably, like, practical, everyday weapon, but that's kind of fun to imagine.
So the Brits did refuse to give up their left hand driving ways and formalized that in 1773, in the General Highways act, which encouraged driving on the left, which is so british. We encourage you. And then in 1835, they made it a law.
[00:09:47] Speaker A: Wait, what was the time between encourage and law?
[00:09:50] Speaker B: 1773 to 1835. So, like, a solid 60 years there.
[00:09:54] Speaker A: Oh, wow. So that was just the wild west of driving.
[00:09:58] Speaker B: Yeah. And as you can guess, the rest of the world folded into whoever had colonized them. So Britain, Australia, New Zealand, India, they drive on the left. French colonies. So some Africa and things like that are right hand side. Okay, here's my favorite thing that I'm not going to tell you much about, but it delights me.
[00:10:20] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:10:21] Speaker B: Sweden in 1967. On one night they went to bed, everybody was left drive. The next morning, everybody was right drive. The government prepared for months, and so there was a day that they switched on, and so there was enough there that I'm like, this is its own episode. But I just want you to know that Sweden is like, we're going to switch. And they just did in 1967.
[00:10:45] Speaker A: Wow.
I'm just trying to think of that happening in the United States. And that's laughable.
[00:10:51] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. That was. Maybe. I'm just going to tell you more. That was one of the factors, because they were looking at, like, the cost of headlights was changing. As car manufacturer changed, infrastructure was increasing, and so road signs, they're like, we gotta. We have to do all of this. We have to restripe the roads.
[00:11:09] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:11:10] Speaker B: Vehicle costs for people is changing. And so it was a public service oriented kind of thing. Like, this is gonna be hideously expensive. The preparation was almost hard to imagine because it meant, like, they had to black out old lines, repaint new lines, put up signage. And so I'm imagining this overnight. They're like, okay, tonight is sign night because tomorrow is switch day. How did they.
[00:11:39] Speaker A: I mean, there would be, like, your freeway exits would be all, yeah, but.
[00:11:43] Speaker B: This is Sweden in 1967.
[00:11:45] Speaker A: I don't run, like, a swiss watch. You know, that guy figured out. Yeah, yeah.
[00:11:51] Speaker B: So this might be worth its own whole episode sometime, because, like, what did they look like culturally at that time?
[00:11:57] Speaker A: Well, that's 67, but, like, wow. Wow.
[00:12:00] Speaker B: Yeah. So Sweden doing their own thing decisively.
[00:12:04] Speaker A: Can you imagine if we were all like, okay, everybody, we need to switch. Texas would be like, we leave. We're leaving.
[00:12:10] Speaker B: Hell, we do.
We're driving anywhere we want.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: You could tear my right lane out of my cold, dead hands.
[00:12:18] Speaker B: Exactly.
So, that's right. Drive. Left, drive. It's all in the history. Conestoga wagons.
[00:12:27] Speaker A: That's pretty cool.
All right, well, wow. It's so funny that for us, it was all about capitalism. That's what decided.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: It was very like, yeah, this is just how we do it.
[00:12:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:42] Speaker B: And in France and Britain, this is how we do it.
Yeah. It was a really different vibe over here.
[00:12:51] Speaker A: Right. Well, if you want to tell us how you do it, like, if you've driven in both situations, which did you like better? Which did you find more confusing? I would like to know, how do.
[00:13:02] Speaker B: You feel about roundabouts?
[00:13:04] Speaker A: Oh. Oh, boy. Don't get us started on that.
[00:13:08] Speaker B: We'll talk about Sweden and roundabouts next time.
[00:13:11] Speaker A: There we go. And if you'd, like, listen to more episodes, you can listen pretty much anywhere. You listen. I mean, you're listening right now. So, you know, ask your smart speaker to pray brain junk. Try something new wherever you listen, please, like, and subscribe. Amy and I will catch you next time when we share more of everything you never knew you wanted to know, and I guarantee you will not be bored.
