LHD or RHD

A British acquaintance with a now well established business for which vans are essential, still feels he needs a RHD. I wondered why? He said that it was how he learned. I asked whether he has ever driven LHD to which he, laughingly, said he had hired cars for holidays and so on.


Then our discussion moved on to French drivers. Hereabouts many of them would be better off with RHD or steering wheels at the centre of the panel to begin with. They spend a lot of time either astride of or on the wrong side of the white line! I put it down to how they learned to drive. When I was young, my mother worked for the now long gone Triang Toys. One year she brought home a pre-shop available new toy for me. Scalectrics! Racing and sports cars on tracks. I therefore suggested to my friend that the French used similar cars on little tracks to begin to learn to drive and never quite got out of those habits. His wife began to chuckle, he smirked and we wandered off down fantasy lane.


Mind you it does not explain why they spend so much time driving on the wrong side of the road. Any ideas out there?

I'll go along with you. Whilst I was split between two countries I found it easiest to have a car in each. So I drove to airport A flew to B and got in my car and went home/office. One was in a LHD and the other a RHD country and actually both are the same. However, my original question is still open about (mainly I suppose) French drivers who use white lines like scalectrix tracks. I was on a motorway a couple of weeks ago and even with three lanes they use two! The question appears to me to be something of an enigma to most people and the answer perhaps never to be reached.

We will never agree on driving each others cars.

I'm also a qualified coach driver and used to do ski transfers from Geneva to the ski resorts for a couple of years. I would drive to work in my RHD car, jump in the LHD 55 seater bus and never have a problem. I've also done a skid pan course and a ROSPA minibus course so consider myself a professional driver.

Hubby would then complain (and still does) that I can't handle his VW caddy van!!!! Beat that for men picking faults on women drivers! And believe you me, driving up and down those mountain roads I ALWAYS drove in the middle. People do get out of your way though, especially when they think there was no one driving, at only 5ft 2" it was quite difficult to see me behind the wheel.

My real point is really about the French drivers with LHD who drive well over the white line, cut corners at precipitous speeds so that reach the opposite verge, overtake with cms to spare, if not occasionally mm and to intents and purposes spend far more time on the wrong side of the road than they should. It is endemic hereabouts, trucks get top marks for bad lane holding with taxis and the 'ambulances' that are not really 'ambulances' close behind. No doubt a few of the LHD drivers are not French but they are in the minority I guess.

I drive both and get so fed up with changing gear with the window winder. But drive a RHD French reg van for work cause it was 5 K euros cheaper than an equivalent French one. But to be honest I dont care either way but the french do tend to get out of the way.

It does annoy me that when you come across em on a country road they drive in the grass for 400 meters before they need to and expect me to do the same.

had LHD cars for years now drove a RHD a couple of years ago and scared myself silly :-O

LOL Tracy, that is exactly how I felt when my husband drives my car. He never listened to me saying he was driving too close and bang, then the mirror disappeared.

Here the roads are so bad and narrow that we also drive down the middle of the road. We also have a RHD van despite living here for ages as second hand RHD's are just so much cheaper, even with tthe cost of re-registering them.

My business car is left hand drive and I am petrified when hubby drives it as I feel I am sitting in the ditch - maybe he is trying to keep out of the way of everyone driving down the middle.

I think you drive in the middle of the road because you get so used to driving down the narrow country lanes. I don't do it on the dual carriageways, but I do tend to be the same as the French on the smaller roads. We do live in the most rural part of France, so often I can drive from A to B without seeing another car, more likely a tractor. :)

My husband uses a van for work and he has always had a RHD, mostly because of the cost of vehicles here. For that reason, when he needs another one, it will probably be a RHD. I don't let him drive my LHD car because he has already taken the wing mirror off once!