Why Americans drive on the right and the UK drives on the left

The United States started as a collection of former British colonies. We speak the same language (more or less).

Yet, for some reason, we drive on opposite sides of the road.

And the United Kingdom isn’t the only country to do it the other way. It turns out that about 30% of the world’s countries mandate left-side driving and the other 70% stay to the right. How it got that way is a twisted tale.

In Europe, Napoleon played a central role in this. In the US, Henry Ford often gets the credit but that’s actually wrong. It goes much further back than Ford. Not only does traffic on the right pre-date cars, it pre-dates the establishment of the United States as an independent nation.

The history of this in the US goes to Conestoga, Pennsylvania, where the Conestoga wagon was key to this whole story. These big wagons, more commonly referred to as covered wagons in movies and on television, had tall, arched cloth roofs and became icons of America’s westward expansion as they carried the belongings of pioneers from the east out to the frontier. Back in the early 1700s, western Pennsylvania was the distant frontier.

Conestoga wagons were developed by local carpenters and blacksmiths to carry goods, including farm produce and items bartered from Native Americans, to markets in Philadelphia which, at the time was one of the biggest cities in the colonies. The wagon driver could ride one of the horses or sit on a lazy board that slid out of the side of the wagon. But when more active control was needed, he walked alongside the horses, pulling levers and ropes.

Most people are right-handed. For just that reason, Conestoga wagons had the controls on the left side, close to the wagon driver’s right hand. That meant the driver was toward the middle of the road and the wagon to the right.

Eventually, there was so much trade and traffic between Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and Philadelphia that America’s first major highway was created. The Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike Road opened in 1795. Among the rules written into its charter, according to the book Ways of the World by M.G. Lay, was that all traffic had to stay to the right – just like the Conestoga wagons did.

In 1804, New York became the first state to dictate traffic stay to the right on all roads and highways.

Some people credit Henry Ford with standardizing US traffic on the right side of the road because, in 1908, Ford Motor Co. put the steering wheel on the left side of its hugely popular Model T automobile. Ford was actually just responding to driving habits that had been largely established long before.

Most of the rest of Europe, excluding Britain, drives on the right like Americans do. The French revolutionary government under Maximilien Robespierre – best known for leading the late 18th-century Reign of Terror in which thousands were guillotined – dictated that everyone should drive on the right.

The left side of the road, by long cultural tradition, was reserved for carriages and those on horseback. In other words, the wealthier classes. Pedestrians, i.e. poorer folks, kept to the right. Forcing everyone to the same side of the road, besides being good for traffic, did away with these snobby class distinctions.

The upper classes went along with this. In the days following the French Revolution, being seen as aristocratic was not only unfashionable, it was rather dangerous. The French policy is said to have been spread by Napoleon Bonaparte as his armies marched through Europe.

There was one nation neither subject to or an ally of Napoleon. That country was Sweden. Sweden drove on the left, then on one uneventful day in 1967 drivers were suddenly switched to the right. Needless to say, it caused some major traffic snarls until people got used to it.

Britain, literally, went the other way from France. It is speculated that it had to do with the different types of conveyance used. There were fewer industrial-sized wagons in Britain, and more small carriages and individual horse riders. Horse riders preferred to stay to the left to keep their right hands toward oncoming traffic for greetings and, if needed, having their sword hand free for fighting.

When traveling to countries where they drive on the opposite side of the street than you're accustomed to, AAA’s head of driver training recommends that drivers take extra steps to concentrate when driving on the other side of the road. For one thing, keep the radio off.

“I think it’s fine to talk to yourself, while you’re driving over there. That kind of forces you to be focusing on driving,” AAA said. “Okay, tight left or far right. Check for traffic from the right rather than the left. Whatever it is, whatever works.”

At Avis Budget Group, which rents lots of cars to Americans driving in the UK, rental agents make sure to remind customers about driving on the left. They take other steps, too. “In addition, all of our vehicles throughout the UK have drive on the left stickers and in major locations we hand out drive on the left wristbands, which we advise our customers to always wear on the left wrist as a reminder of which side of the road to drive,” Avis Budget said in a statement.

One thing I found particularly interesting the first time I was in London was the pedestrian instructions. In areas with high tourist foot traffic, they have literally painted instructions on the street pavement at pedestrian crossings telling those on foot to look to the right for oncoming traffic rather than to the left as we do in the US. I can only assume this is the result of way too many pedestrians stepping off the curb in front of on-coming cars.

In Canada, the central provinces, Ontario, and Québec have always driven on the right side of the road. British Columbia, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island all drove on the left side. In the early 1920s, they changed from left side driving to the right side of the road.