martinjlm
Retired from GM
Awesome post on the standards for railway tracks. Similar but nowhere near as interesting rationale for why some countries drive on the right side of the road and some on the left.
The countries that drive on the left were all British properties at the time of the advent of the automobile, so since the British drove on the left, so did they. So why did the British start driving on the left? Because it was customary to ride horses on the left and since the automobiles traveled on the same roads, so did they. So why did the British ride horses on the left? Think “jousting”. Lances were not just for medieval tournaments, they were also for use in private protection of travelers from highwaymen and bandits. Since most people are right-handed, the protectors usually presented their lance in their right hand. They also wanted them positioned along the center of the road in order to take care of oncoming threats approaching head on. So the right hand (and lance) were positioned in the middle of the road, while the rider was toward the left.
So that explains the UK, Australia, South Africa, and several European countries (most of whom have since converted to right side, btw). Why does the USA drive on the right side? Well, there was this little dust up called the American Revolutionary War. Up until that time, American settlers also traveled primarily on the left side of the road. After defeating the British, the colonists shed as much of British tradition as they could without being totally stupid about it. About the same time, the French Revolution was in full swing. Because the French aristocracy traditionally rode their carriages on the left side of the road, forcing peasants to the right, the post revolution society adopted traveling on the right, thumbing a collective nose to the aristocracy. Since France had been an ally of the colonists during the American Revolution, the colonists adopted the French way of doing things to further piss off the British.
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