Right Hand Drive ~ the correct side of the road to drive.

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If your car is right hand drive, it was obviously made for a country where people drive on the left hand side of the road. This configuration facilitates the driver to see past the car in front and more easily judge the upcoming traffic conditions, especially if they want to overtake.

This works equally well for countries that have left hand drive (and hence drive on the right), but those people will be up in arms to discover that the correct side of the road to drive on is actually the left, as we do in Britain and other enlightened countries. Unfortunately for them it's true, and just goes to show what they know.

A long, long time ago...

...certainly before Star Wars was made, way before guns and cars were invented, further back in time than the prophet Mohammed, long before the Romans even, probably before the beginnings of the first civilizations, and preceeding the invention of the wheel ~ the most popular alternative to getting about the place by walking everywhere on foot was having a horse.

Now any equestrian will tell you that you mount a horse from the left hand side (no, really, they will!) and the reason for this is because, in those days, if you were rich enough to have a horse, you probably had a sword too, so you could defend yourself from thieving peasant gits after your money.

Now, your sword would hang at your left hand side, so you could draw it with your right hand ~ “ But what if you were left handed?” you ask ~ well in those days it was unnatural to be left handed, and you'd probably be dead if you were , burnt at the stake for being a witch or something worse. In those days it was better to learn to be right handed and live than go around upsetting the apple cart of what were very superstitious people.

So you have a big heavy sword hanging at your left hand side and the last thing you want to do is fling it over your horse as you mount it, so you mount your horse from the left hand side, and that, boys and girls, is why that is that!

Consider then, if you were so armed with said sword and had cause to wield it, where you would want your thieving peasant git to be? Obviously on the right hand side of you, so you could get a good chop at him, which means you would occupy the left hand side of the road.

Now this is not the whole of the story, so let us continue our portrait of ancient days as civilisations developed, but still long before public sewage systems and sanitation. In those days waste, that today we would throw in the bin (unwanted food scraps) or flushed down the drain (piddles and poo), was simply flung straight into the middle of the road.

Even until quite recently in history, when town houses were so cramped and crowded they overhung their first floors into the streets (picture the time preceeding the great fire of London), the middle of the road was little more than a revolting drain and gutter. An herein lies the key...

...because you did not want to walk into the filth in the middle of the road (your boots would get very mucky) you would mount from the side of the road (which would be the left, as explained above). This would leave the horse heading off on the left hand side of the road.

Furthermore, you would head off on the left hand side of the road, in that direction you are facing so as to avoid crossing the filth in the centre of the road and the chances of any waste being thrown onto you from the floors of the houses above.

And further-furthermore, if you were to come under attack it would be fitting to smite your opponents ruin upon said waste and excrement.

So there you have it, in a nutshell. The reason the left hand side of the road is the correct side of the road to drive on. Of course it doesn't really matter these days what side of the road you drive on, but historically speaking we have always driven on the left.

Now where I come from we've got a saying, "If it aint broke, don't fix it!" so whoever came up with the idea of driving on the right was just being awkard, contentious, downright silly, and is solely responsible for the whole damn mess. Supposedely it was Napoleon (himself a left hander) who in a fit of Imperialistic pique decided his subjects must henceforth drive on the right. Obviously the only bigger fools than this little French man are the fools that have been eternally influenced by his whimsical decision.

Ha! Ha! ;~)


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