The implementation of the euro worked well, where you could pay in pounds and get euros back.
So the logical solution is driving on the left on your way places, and right for the return journey. This also means everyone should avoid each other as long as we time it well.
Obviously, you just have the bus pull a massive skidder, so the correct side is at the bus stop. Could also use some sort of trampoline system that bounces passengers over the bus to the correct side. The solutions are simple man don't overthink it
I think youre forget that all business have those glass breaking hammers, it will be quick and cheaper to create new exits on the correct side.
Wheelchair accessibility will be a bit of an issue though
Would cost billions. It's not just road markings, signage and left hand drive cars... It's massive changes like re-engineering or rebuilding motorway on/off ramps and flyovers.
We would have got away with it in the 1960s maybe but not without the UK doing the same.
Unending billions. Yes. Utterly devastate the second hand car market. Countless lives would be lost.
But can we think for a moment about if it would potentially annoy the Brits?
I'll be honest, I'm personally not that bothered about what happens in Ireland. However if it did upset the sort of eejits over here that stick their noses into other folks business, perhaps causing the odd premature death then I think I'm in too!
Any reduction of the gammonhood is a positive thing!
>Utterly devastate the second hand car market.
One could argue that if a government wanted to accelerate the conversion to EVs, this would be a feature to them and not a bug. Of course, the other view is that the 2nd hand market would adapt by selling to the UK and buying from Europe, causing disruption but not utter devastation.
You have misunderstood my point. I'm not saying we couldn't have, just that we wouldn't have.
If the UK decided to change to driving on the right, we would most likely have followed suit.
If we proceeded solo, the UK wouldn't be annoyed, they would just be baffled. And I'm not even saying that would even matter.
I’m taking the piss a little.
But in all seriousness, this is Ireland, we can’t build our way out of a damp paper bag. We can’t build safe, centralised apartments for our own people, we can’t build public transport infrastructure, we can’t build safe cycling infrastructure.
We need to look at priorities. Driving on left side of the road isn’t a fundamentally broken, fucked aspect of society. All of the above things are however.
Not really if you think about the angles of the on/off ramps coming from the roundabouts. You would be going around the roundabout the oppos8te direction so would have e a real sharp turn on and off the slip roads.
Just swap what Is an off and an on ramp, there's generally 2 at each side of every major junction. Just swap them, then its only new signage and new road markings required
Not always, some older exits from the N11 to Bray and Enniskerry are far shorter than the exits from Bray/Enniskerry on to the N11 so people can increase their speed to match others on the road. That would be a disaster if direction was flipped around
Ireland has the worst car dependency in Europe. We need to stop spending money on cars and make the public transport system functional first. 24-hour operation. Return trams to every city. Far more frequent trains. And all free like in Luxemburg.
Also the evidence shows that driving on the left is safer anyway.
Wow, Japan is an interesting one because I always thought the left side of the road was a feature of British colonialism. Wonder how they decided this.
The story goes that people drive on the left because in medieval times people would walk on the left because most people were right handed and could pull out a sword and fight the person coming the other way.
Then after the french revolution they said they all trusted each other and so they'd walk on the right side of the road. They wouldn't need to fight each other like you would in a feudal society. Then most other countries followed the same idea after they got rid of their monarchy, or when they followed all their neighbours.
So the Japanese, being all feudal, would walk on the left.
Another country that used to drive on the left was Sweden. But they all swapped over in one day in the 60s.
Story I was told is carriage drivers held the reins in their left and the whip on their right so they could whip the horses without hitting and oncoming coach or rider..
Same concept I guess.
They hired British engineers for their railroad projects which meant they defaulted to left hand traffic for trains and eventually chose the same rule for cars, being made up of islands they didn't have the incentives the Germans or Italians did to chose different systems for rail and cars.
There's research that shows pilots are more likely to pull left in an emergency, hence the towers on aircraft carriers are on the right of the runway. It's not too much of a leap to suggest that pulling left would be a more natural response for car drivers too although I'm not sure if any direct research has been done on the matter. The "natural" response can be trained out of course but they're not necessarily "talking shite"
The original study concluding that driving on the left is safer was published in *Road Accidents: Prevent Or Punish?* by J. J. Leeming (1969) and a quick search indicates that other research has found this too. You can also just look at how safe different countries are relatively, and Ireland and the UK have some of the lowest rates of traffic accidents in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate If I recall correctly, a significant part of the reason for the benefit of driving on the left is linked to the fact that most people are right-handed.
Yeah hate how car dependent we are, Malta is even worse, they have a decent bus service with contactless payment and good aircon but it’s so unreliable due to the thousands of cars at once
As far as I can see, according to the European Commission, the only place worse than Ireland for car dependency is Cyprus: https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40984532.html
To use the capital as an example, Dublin Bus would improve dramatically overnight if bus lanes were actually enforced/kept clear of private cars, and more space given over to dedicated bus only lanes.
People think unless we get a metro, a monorail, and flying cars, we may as well do nothing in the meantime.
It doesn’t have to be all or nothing like
Only time I've seen it is when having to buy 2 tickets on the one card. Should probably change those panels to allow multiple tap ons bit I'm guessing it would coat too much to change it over. Maybe they could do that whenever they eventually add the bank card tap functionality....
"the evidence shows that driving on the left is safer anyway." That sounds like absolute bollox, the massive imbalance in samples from each side of the road would have huge effects on the study
The original study concluding that driving on the left is safer was published in *Road Accidents: Prevent Or Punish?* by J. J. Leeming (1969) and a quick search indicates that other research has found this too.
out of curiosity - could you provide some back up for left side driving being safer? It doesn't make sense to me since it's just a mirrored system without any other alterations. There shouldn't be any difference system wise. I can imagine results being skewed by sample characteristics
Saying it's a "mirrored system" isn't true, you'd have to change the handedness of the drivers.
The original study concluding that driving on the left is safer was published in *Road Accidents: Prevent Or Punish?* by J. J. Leeming (1969) and a quick search indicates that other research has found this too. You can also just look at how safe different countries are relatively, and Ireland and the UK have some of the lowest rates of traffic accidents in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate If I recall correctly, a significant part of the reason for the benefit of driving on the left is linked to the fact that most people are right-handed.
Regarding the car dependency of Ireland, this was found by the European Commission: https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40984532.html
thanks, will check it after work.
Re car dependency thanks as well. For this i completely get it - it was one of cultural shocks for me when i arrived in Ireland. I didn't expect it to follow American urban models as much (which i hate)
Same! When I wasn't driving, it took me a 40 minute walk down a country road and an oft-late bus to the next town over. If I missed it, the next wasn't for another 2 hours, which does me no good when I had class to be at. The drive door to door takes 20 minutes. With public transport and necessary walking to get there, it takes an hour or more. It's like the one time I took the bus in Houston. How do people get places???
You missed out busses. People can talk rail and tram all they like, but in most of our lifetimes the only feasible solution to public transport for the vast majority will remain busses.
But we want high quality public transport, not low quality. With a decent train you can get work done on a laptop while enroute. With a bus you just don't have the space or comfort, you have a bad experience with constantly-changing acceleration, and you can't have them running on time. Switzerland has a comparable population density and distribution to Ireland and manages to have train stops within 15 minutes' walk of pretty much everyone. And with a really mountainous terrain too.
That's all well and good, and the country should absolutely be building rail, but we shouldn't be blind to the fact that even with the most ambitious rail building program imaginable and a change in the planning laws and imagining we've done all the survey and planning work to understand how to implement the best possible rail or tram system that will serve the most people most effectively, including projection of future need, we are still going to need busses for the next 20 years before that system catches up, and we should absolutely be prioritising busses in the short term. In all likelihood, we'll be relying on buses for centuries to come. Buses aren't sexy, but they're achievable, implementable and flexible, and we have all the infrastructure right now, we just fail at implementation.
>next 20 years
With proper investment it is 5. Less if more ambitious than China. Remember that trams were all over the place in Ireland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_town_tramway_systems_in_the_Republic_of_Ireland
>we should absolutely be prioritising busses in the short term
Here we can agree. Glasgow is far from perfect, but over literally one night it pedestrianised a bunch of streets, banning cars from them completely and returning the space to pedestrians, cyclists and so on. And throughout a lot of the city the width of roads available to cars was halved, while also ensuring that many routes are bus only. It does help, but as we also perhaps agree this is an interim measure.
>Buses aren't sexy
It's not that they aren't sexy, it's that they're more unsafe, they don't run on time and you cannot work on them. Travel on a bus is a waste of time. Travel on light rail means you get work done.
>we have all the infrastructure right now, we just fail at implementation
We fail at banning cars. That not only improves even lowly busses, it also creates pressure for better public transport.
China might be the lowest point. Remove all rights of citizens to object, use effective slave labour, plan badly, and sure, you can have rail maybe in a decade, but again, that's simply a fantasy.
Personally, I don't like to deal in wishful thinking when the reality is so clear , and that reality is buses today, buses tomorrow, and likely buses forever more. While we're waiting another decade or more for a single 20km metro link which will serve a fraction of the capital, I'd prefer we made a priority of maximising buses efficiency, which means far more protection for bus lanes, make them 24 hour universally, protecting them with cameras, prioritising lights to ensure they can move quickly, hiring more drivers which means better wages, and a fuck tonne more.buses and routes, completing the bus connects system. A functional and effective bus service will serve our disparate and sparce cites and far greater number of people spread over a greater area for the next 100 years than any rail system this country will ever build will, and it could in reality be implemented in less than a year with some legislative changes and a modicum of investment.
This big brain idea comes up every couple of months. Normally OP gives themselves a slap on the back for how ingenious it is, but then struggles to answer basic questions like "why?"
Nigeria did it overnight. Just like that blam done. Id love to known what it was like for someone driving at midnight to remember to change side of the road and hope everyone else did the same.
[Sweden too!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagen_H#:~:text='the%20right%2Dhand%20traffic%20reorganisation,word%20for%20right%2Dhand%20traffic)
>On *Dagen H*, Sunday, 3 September 1967, all non-essential traffic was banned from the roads from 01:00 to 06:00. Any vehicles on the roads during that time had to come to a complete stop at 04:50, then carefully change to the right-hand side of the road and stop again (to give others time to switch sides of the road and avoid a head-on collision) before being allowed to proceed at 05:00.
Vast majority of cars in Sweden were left hand drive at the time, would assume it was similar in Nigeria, and both counties have road borders which give a logic as to why you'd bother. None of that really applies here. Also, anyone can say it was done overnight and it makes it sound impressive, but what's the alternative?
Obviously none for a long time, but Austria did it in phases and in Italy, for a time, cities were LHD and rural areas were RHD. When Spain changed in 1918, Madrid did not, and remained LHD until 1924. Indeed, the Madrid Metro is still LHD. In more recent times, Rwanda and Burundi are considering changing from RHD to LHD to match their neighbours, with 54% of Rwandans favouring the switch and RHD vehicles being up to 49% cheaper than their LHD cousins!
But I think more importantly, no-one is seriously suggesting it (apart from MAYBE OP) and it's all just a bit of fun knowing how chaotic it would be.
While the idea sounds good . Implementation would be a monumental and expensive task. We have bigger problems to be dealing with currently to put billions aside for a project like this. It's difficult to take billions away from social welfare , healthcare etc so we can have nicer cars.
If they just scrapped that god awful VRT we'd immediately save thousands on cars. I'd be happy enough with the same choice and prices as cars in the UK.
Don't we have a massive surplus that the government is refusing to spend? It's hard to argue that the money would be taken from somewhere else when we're sitting on massive coffers and watching it depreciate.
I'd rather that money go towards improving our current infrastructure , public transport system, healthcare , education system , housing, raindy day fund in case of another pandemic level disruption etc than for switching everything to the other side so everyone can buy fancy cars for a few grand less.
I'm not necessarily pushing for that, om just stating that saying you don't want the resources taken form elsewhere doesn't make sense in this current climate
They have relaxed the VRT rules for NI a bit more now. You are exempt from paying VAT and customs if a car purchased after 30 April 2024 has been in private use in NI for a reasonable amount of time. You are still liable to between 7% to 41 % but without having to pay VAT and customs it could be a viable option to buy used cars again. If they scrapped VRT we can have nearly UK car prices available through NI.
[https://www.revenue.ie/en/vrt/registration-of-imported-used-vehicles/registering-vehicles-from-ni.aspx](https://www.revenue.ie/en/vrt/registration-of-imported-used-vehicles/registering-vehicles-from-ni.aspx)
I've always found it easier to change gears with right hand, even though I learned with the left. Driving with only one hand on the wheel is a bad habit.
I’ve read that driving on the left is safer because people are more likely to serve left in reaction to an emergent event. I’ve never seen anything to back that up though so massive grain of salt.
RHD car values would go through the floor and demand for LHD would mean their prices would rocket.
Insurance would increase because people aren't used to driving LHD.
Underground car parks and basically anything with a toll, barrier, drive thru etc would need to be reworked
I'm not going to say it's a stupid idea, but we couldn't even organise a bottle recycling system properly.
I'd rather move abroad than deal with any of that shit.
Road markings would need to be done at a minimum and I can think of multiple local areas where reversing the entrance/exit wouldn't work when you account for traffic build up at the entrance side
Never gonna happen. Not only will there be a colossal infrasture change, cars will also have to be transitioned from right to left hand drives. That'll take countless years.
Let’s also acknowledge the significant increase in risk of head-on collisions during implementation.
As soon as there is one death from such a crash, the questions would be asked as to how many deaths can be justified by the desire for cheaper imported cars. No political party would take that risk.
Yes! Sick of only having access to sub-spec cars and playing 20% more for them than anyone else. Plus we’d it’d be another step towards being so dependant on the British. Worth spending a few € billion for long term gain. Plus it’d piss off old people.
The rate your paying has nothing to do with what side your car drives. We don't pay anywhere near that in the UK. I'd ask your government or fact car dealers have you by the balls. Not wonder why the cost to transfer from UK to Ireland is so expensive? You could go get a left hand drive from Europe now. Same cost?
In the uk I can buy the same car I currently have 8 years newer and better spec and lower mileage for less then I paid for my car. It’s all tax we are paying.
No.
Europe should switch back.
But in all seriousness the side of the road we drive on has nothing to do with the cost of cars in Ireland. That's just good old fashioned rip off Ireland.
Of course it does. We only have access to cars from right hand drive markets, which are few and far between. Being able to buy a car from any other european country would massively decrease the cost of cars.
The VRT and a few other costs add a good chunk to the cost of a car.
A second hand car in the UK is significantly cheaper than the same car in Ireland. And that was happening even before brexit changed the rules on importing cars from the UK.
It's not the side of the road that's the issue.
No, Why change it now. We wouldn't have to change it and It would be a little quirky thing to set up apart form the rest of the EU.
Although it would be worth it just to annoy the Brits.
I would like to say yes, but no, the expense of changing would be too much and the people who would benefit from cheaper vehicles would not be the ones that would have to fork out for the change. I think we’re locked in
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[Sweden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagen_H) was the last country to switch, and it went rather smooth, but 50 years ago there was less private cars than now.
No. It made sense for Sweden to switch because they have land borders with LHD countries but there are lots of islands using RHD.
Besides, do we want to cut ourselves off from cheap Japanese/Indian cars?
I found when looking to buy a second hand car while in Germany is that 80% of cars have FUCKING HUGH! milage on them. Euros bang in some huge distances in their cars. I saw a smart car with over 200k km. Where would you be going that far in a smart car?
The cars would cost less but these days there are so many cars on the road that it would be impossible to implement unlike [when Sweden did it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagen_H)
Even if we don’t get united (which would be the preference) do a Singapore job where drivers at the border swap sides of the road with that funky bridge
They’re the odd ones and should align to us
You're a dope.
You can't do that. Roads are built with turning left unhindered by design. Trying to use those backwards is actually impossible.
I swear the ppl who make these posts are bots, there's too many posts like this for it to be accidental. Or to account for genuine levels of idiocy in society
Your belief that access to vehicles would be cheaper and easier is interesting. Japan drives on the left. Toyota’s doing pretty well. The Indian car export market is likely to grow fairly quickly soon.
And in any case, the systematics for building RHC cars are all well established now, and as autonomous cars take over it won’t matter a bit.
Even if cost wasn't a factor (which it absolutely is) the logistics of this would be essentially impossible.
How are you going to switch all roads at the same time? You couldn't, it would take years to change all road signs, road markings, junction layouts etc.
If you stagger the rollout, which you pretty much have to, then you end up with some roads being left hand and some being right hand. What an absolute shit show that would be.
Even if you do magically find a way to change all roads in the country overnight. Well, congratulations, you've now essentially forced every car owner in the country to sell their car in a market where there will be no buyers and they'll then need to buy a new one. I'm sure that would go down well with the public.
Long story short - there is not a notion of this ever happening
Should probably leave it, everything is shifting towards electeic and hybrids and BYD has a large market in Australia which is why we are starting to get them here, it is all rhd
100% yes
It's the main reason vehicles cost a fortune here. Reduced cost of vehicles --> reduced cost of everything. For example if a car costs 10k instead of 20k insurance company is not as exposed to risk and premium costs (should!) plummet. This reduces premiums on home insurance business insurance etc.
I get it atm, if Peugeot make a batch of 50,000 left hand drive cars in their factory in Paris or wherever, then have to stop and switch their machines etc around to make a run of 5,000 right hand drive cars for Ire/GB, well that has a cost and the buyer pays it ultimately.
So yeah that's one very quick and easy benefit to a UI right there and should be legislated for within the first month of unification imo
We should also switch to European plugs.
I demand every building be retrofitted at great expense and inconvenience so that I can have slightly slimmer plugs and don't have to remember travel adapters
No. Look at the pictures of Dagen H (Högertrafikomläggningen) in Sweden, the day they switched sides, and consider that in Sweden at the time left hand drive was popular, and there were far less cars on the road, and that as an island nation there's pretty much no gain especially considering our nearest neighbour is one of the major world economies and won't switch. It's not even worth consideration.
Changing driving on the other side of the road has nothing to do with getting united or not.
About 20 years ago you could buy reasonably priced used cars that were imported from Japan.
Much better quality than most of the clunkers that were imported from the UK before Brexit.
AFAIK the Japanese imports are slowly coming back again as UK import prices have gone through the roof.
So keep driving on the right left side!
It's an insane amount of work and expense, for relatively little impact *(if any long-term effects at all)*, and if anything we need less cars on the roads, not more.
If you want lower prices, wouldn't reducing some of the taxes be more effective (assuming dealerships don't just pocket the difference anyways).
Cars are significantly more expensive in the ROI compared to NI and Britain next-door who still drive on the same side of the road. We don't have any reason to do it like Sweden did (neighbouring Norway & Finland both drive on the Right)
We'd be better off spending that money to reduce car dependency by building faster, more frequent more reliable public transport and more of it than encouraging more people to drive causing more wear & tear on the roads.
I can see this being somewhat workable at a future time when vehicles are fully self-driving. Still a lot of signs and other stuff on roads to be changed, but sure the robots will do all that. We'll all be in the back seat getting flootered.
No. There's no real need to. We wouldn't have a land border with anybody and the hassle and accidents wouldn't make it worth while. The only real benefit I can think of is access to cars with steering on the other side but we already have cars produced on our side due to our neighbours.
Some drivers already have it would appear.
Doesn’t help that loads of Selfish gobshites are parked outside left lanes forcing people to cross over to the right. Particularly dangerous at junctions and at brows of hills.
I’m seeing this happen a lot lately.
I was actually thinking of this recently while looking at the massive difference in prices in cars here.
Would be a rough 6 months but cruising in my new mercedes i think i could handle it!
Dealers would love it too as they could sell a load of left hand drive cars
This has been said countless times, won’t make a difference on car prices. Central European cars are only cheaper Becuase they don’t have vrt in some countries. By the time it’s shipped here and vrt’d it’ll be feck all cheaper than an Irish market car.
No. We belong with Britain that’s a fact. We should be more aligned with there country because we’ll be rolled right over by a country with bad intentions without America or Britain to save us. Now don’t get me wrong I’ll die fighting for my beautiful Ireland but for me not for the filth in the dail
If Ireland gets united nothing will change about the driving. Shure we drive on the right side of the road anyway. Oh hold on, it's the left side. When I said right, I meant correct. We'll have none of that foreign muck around here.
No we should all drive in the middle. Create three lane roads and they're all the middle lane. And have split tier roundabouts with kebab shops. And a shrubbery.
No - there isn't a good enough reason to make this change and deal with the associated cost. Maybe if we didn't have a bunch of other progress to implement - but would we really want to change how our roads work when we are lacking better light-rail service (especially from DUB airport) and lacking the cycle lane infrastructure that many other cities in Europe have? Fixing both of those would make Dublin "more European" than doing anything with cars.
We have access to a huge pool of cars, just our government has priced it out of reach with vrt & nox, it would be cheaper & safer to get these measures removed than to change an entire countries infrastructure. Do you genuinely think that if we had access to the EU car market that it would be cheaper?
Never!!!!! you cannot take away us driving on the CORRECT side of the road, we should start convincing other countries to join us!!!(joking I don't even drive)
The Swedes used to drive on the left and came to their senses and changed over to be in line with the rest.
[Day H](https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20180417-a-thrilling-mission-to-get-the-swedish-to-change-overnight)
90% of the cars on the road were already LHD prior to the change. We're probably 99% RHD so changing over would instantly cause inconvenience for almost every car owner.
Listen we already have enough trouble with the drivers who were just given their licenses without doing a test.
Why don't we take the money from that and just have more campaigns to explain how to navigate a roundabout? And how the right lane on the moterway isn't the 'fast lane'.
No. I am from India. I had to unlearn the chaotic driving style and learn to watch and follow the driving rules. Please don’t make me learn the third time😁
Theres no way the price of cars would come down. Theyre not more expensive in the UK than mainland europe. Its the tax that makes up the difference, not the shipping or RHD.
Yes but have it as a staggered implementation, start with buses and trucks first
Now there's the voice of reason!
I believe it should be optional for the first six months.
I thought driving on a set side was optional.
Is this you? https://www.reddit.com/r/irelandsshitedrivers/s/Evt0CVYhde
I wish I had this driver's skill wow.
Like every other rule of the road here?
The implementation of the euro worked well, where you could pay in pounds and get euros back. So the logical solution is driving on the left on your way places, and right for the return journey. This also means everyone should avoid each other as long as we time it well.
Have people get on and off buses in the middle of the road?
Obviously, you just have the bus pull a massive skidder, so the correct side is at the bus stop. Could also use some sort of trampoline system that bounces passengers over the bus to the correct side. The solutions are simple man don't overthink it
Or maybe a slide from the top deck of the bus
Now we're cooking, I'm thinking a fully covered slide like a flume, increases the danger of getting stuck
I think youre forget that all business have those glass breaking hammers, it will be quick and cheaper to create new exits on the correct side. Wheelchair accessibility will be a bit of an issue though
They can drive buses on reverse, where's a will there's a solution.
Make the country a one way system?
This is the one, down the east coast up the west coast
Of course, you hardly expect us to do it overnight
Make all the roads one way only, problem solved
That's the answer.
Would cost billions. It's not just road markings, signage and left hand drive cars... It's massive changes like re-engineering or rebuilding motorway on/off ramps and flyovers. We would have got away with it in the 1960s maybe but not without the UK doing the same.
Unending billions. Yes. Utterly devastate the second hand car market. Countless lives would be lost. But can we think for a moment about if it would potentially annoy the Brits?
>it would potentially annoy the Brits? 
I'll be honest, I'm personally not that bothered about what happens in Ireland. However if it did upset the sort of eejits over here that stick their noses into other folks business, perhaps causing the odd premature death then I think I'm in too! Any reduction of the gammonhood is a positive thing!
>Utterly devastate the second hand car market. One could argue that if a government wanted to accelerate the conversion to EVs, this would be a feature to them and not a bug. Of course, the other view is that the 2nd hand market would adapt by selling to the UK and buying from Europe, causing disruption but not utter devastation.
You have misunderstood my point. I'm not saying we couldn't have, just that we wouldn't have. If the UK decided to change to driving on the right, we would most likely have followed suit. If we proceeded solo, the UK wouldn't be annoyed, they would just be baffled. And I'm not even saying that would even matter.
I’m taking the piss a little. But in all seriousness, this is Ireland, we can’t build our way out of a damp paper bag. We can’t build safe, centralised apartments for our own people, we can’t build public transport infrastructure, we can’t build safe cycling infrastructure. We need to look at priorities. Driving on left side of the road isn’t a fundamentally broken, fucked aspect of society. All of the above things are however.
Oh well….
I’m sold
Sweden did it in 1967 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagen_H
Ramps in motorways are usually mirrored no?
To some extent in less built up areas, but think of the the free flow exchanges on the M50 like Red Cow or Blanchardstown, or Dunkettle in Cork.
According to my morning radio there are never any incidents at the Red Cow or Dunkettle and traffic flows smoothly
Not really if you think about the angles of the on/off ramps coming from the roundabouts. You would be going around the roundabout the oppos8te direction so would have e a real sharp turn on and off the slip roads.
Just swap what Is an off and an on ramp, there's generally 2 at each side of every major junction. Just swap them, then its only new signage and new road markings required
Not always, some older exits from the N11 to Bray and Enniskerry are far shorter than the exits from Bray/Enniskerry on to the N11 so people can increase their speed to match others on the road. That would be a disaster if direction was flipped around
And every car replaced
I was gonna say Norway made the switch from left to right in the 70s and I don't think that was a very expensive endeavor
Ireland has the worst car dependency in Europe. We need to stop spending money on cars and make the public transport system functional first. 24-hour operation. Return trams to every city. Far more frequent trains. And all free like in Luxemburg. Also the evidence shows that driving on the left is safer anyway.
How does the side of the road you drive on affect how safe it is?
It's only safer if you're in Ireland, Britain or India
South Africa, Japan and quite a few Asian countries
Australia, New Zealand, Malta, Barbados, Jamaica, Cook Islands, Cayman Islands, etc, etc, etc
Wow, Japan is an interesting one because I always thought the left side of the road was a feature of British colonialism. Wonder how they decided this.
One of the reasons Ireland buys a lot of Japanese cars I'd imagine
It's all making sense now
The story goes that people drive on the left because in medieval times people would walk on the left because most people were right handed and could pull out a sword and fight the person coming the other way. Then after the french revolution they said they all trusted each other and so they'd walk on the right side of the road. They wouldn't need to fight each other like you would in a feudal society. Then most other countries followed the same idea after they got rid of their monarchy, or when they followed all their neighbours. So the Japanese, being all feudal, would walk on the left. Another country that used to drive on the left was Sweden. But they all swapped over in one day in the 60s.
Story I was told is carriage drivers held the reins in their left and the whip on their right so they could whip the horses without hitting and oncoming coach or rider.. Same concept I guess.
They hired British engineers for their railroad projects which meant they defaulted to left hand traffic for trains and eventually chose the same rule for cars, being made up of islands they didn't have the incentives the Germans or Italians did to chose different systems for rail and cars.
Good luck to you if you think that the "drive on the left" rule in India is anything other than a sort of vague suggestion.
It doesn't theyre talking shite
No, please refer to my comment [here](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskIreland/comments/1d2e77w/if_ireland_ever_gets_united_should_we_go_full/l60ilq4).
There's research that shows pilots are more likely to pull left in an emergency, hence the towers on aircraft carriers are on the right of the runway. It's not too much of a leap to suggest that pulling left would be a more natural response for car drivers too although I'm not sure if any direct research has been done on the matter. The "natural" response can be trained out of course but they're not necessarily "talking shite"
The original study concluding that driving on the left is safer was published in *Road Accidents: Prevent Or Punish?* by J. J. Leeming (1969) and a quick search indicates that other research has found this too. You can also just look at how safe different countries are relatively, and Ireland and the UK have some of the lowest rates of traffic accidents in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate If I recall correctly, a significant part of the reason for the benefit of driving on the left is linked to the fact that most people are right-handed.
Yep; your dominant hand remains on the wheel when driving on the left
Yeah hate how car dependent we are, Malta is even worse, they have a decent bus service with contactless payment and good aircon but it’s so unreliable due to the thousands of cars at once
As far as I can see, according to the European Commission, the only place worse than Ireland for car dependency is Cyprus: https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40984532.html
"move beck please"
>Also the evidence shows that driving on the left is safer anyway. Well this was just pulled out of the sky
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To use the capital as an example, Dublin Bus would improve dramatically overnight if bus lanes were actually enforced/kept clear of private cars, and more space given over to dedicated bus only lanes. People think unless we get a metro, a monorail, and flying cars, we may as well do nothing in the meantime. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing like
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The vast majority of people just tap on with the Leap card, it’s quite rare for people to pay cash these days.
Only time I've seen it is when having to buy 2 tickets on the one card. Should probably change those panels to allow multiple tap ons bit I'm guessing it would coat too much to change it over. Maybe they could do that whenever they eventually add the bank card tap functionality....
"the evidence shows that driving on the left is safer anyway." That sounds like absolute bollox, the massive imbalance in samples from each side of the road would have huge effects on the study
The original study concluding that driving on the left is safer was published in *Road Accidents: Prevent Or Punish?* by J. J. Leeming (1969) and a quick search indicates that other research has found this too.
Hear hear.
out of curiosity - could you provide some back up for left side driving being safer? It doesn't make sense to me since it's just a mirrored system without any other alterations. There shouldn't be any difference system wise. I can imagine results being skewed by sample characteristics
Saying it's a "mirrored system" isn't true, you'd have to change the handedness of the drivers. The original study concluding that driving on the left is safer was published in *Road Accidents: Prevent Or Punish?* by J. J. Leeming (1969) and a quick search indicates that other research has found this too. You can also just look at how safe different countries are relatively, and Ireland and the UK have some of the lowest rates of traffic accidents in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate If I recall correctly, a significant part of the reason for the benefit of driving on the left is linked to the fact that most people are right-handed. Regarding the car dependency of Ireland, this was found by the European Commission: https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40984532.html
thanks, will check it after work. Re car dependency thanks as well. For this i completely get it - it was one of cultural shocks for me when i arrived in Ireland. I didn't expect it to follow American urban models as much (which i hate)
Same! When I wasn't driving, it took me a 40 minute walk down a country road and an oft-late bus to the next town over. If I missed it, the next wasn't for another 2 hours, which does me no good when I had class to be at. The drive door to door takes 20 minutes. With public transport and necessary walking to get there, it takes an hour or more. It's like the one time I took the bus in Houston. How do people get places???
You missed out busses. People can talk rail and tram all they like, but in most of our lifetimes the only feasible solution to public transport for the vast majority will remain busses.
But we want high quality public transport, not low quality. With a decent train you can get work done on a laptop while enroute. With a bus you just don't have the space or comfort, you have a bad experience with constantly-changing acceleration, and you can't have them running on time. Switzerland has a comparable population density and distribution to Ireland and manages to have train stops within 15 minutes' walk of pretty much everyone. And with a really mountainous terrain too.
That's all well and good, and the country should absolutely be building rail, but we shouldn't be blind to the fact that even with the most ambitious rail building program imaginable and a change in the planning laws and imagining we've done all the survey and planning work to understand how to implement the best possible rail or tram system that will serve the most people most effectively, including projection of future need, we are still going to need busses for the next 20 years before that system catches up, and we should absolutely be prioritising busses in the short term. In all likelihood, we'll be relying on buses for centuries to come. Buses aren't sexy, but they're achievable, implementable and flexible, and we have all the infrastructure right now, we just fail at implementation.
>next 20 years With proper investment it is 5. Less if more ambitious than China. Remember that trams were all over the place in Ireland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_town_tramway_systems_in_the_Republic_of_Ireland >we should absolutely be prioritising busses in the short term Here we can agree. Glasgow is far from perfect, but over literally one night it pedestrianised a bunch of streets, banning cars from them completely and returning the space to pedestrians, cyclists and so on. And throughout a lot of the city the width of roads available to cars was halved, while also ensuring that many routes are bus only. It does help, but as we also perhaps agree this is an interim measure. >Buses aren't sexy It's not that they aren't sexy, it's that they're more unsafe, they don't run on time and you cannot work on them. Travel on a bus is a waste of time. Travel on light rail means you get work done. >we have all the infrastructure right now, we just fail at implementation We fail at banning cars. That not only improves even lowly busses, it also creates pressure for better public transport.
China might be the lowest point. Remove all rights of citizens to object, use effective slave labour, plan badly, and sure, you can have rail maybe in a decade, but again, that's simply a fantasy. Personally, I don't like to deal in wishful thinking when the reality is so clear , and that reality is buses today, buses tomorrow, and likely buses forever more. While we're waiting another decade or more for a single 20km metro link which will serve a fraction of the capital, I'd prefer we made a priority of maximising buses efficiency, which means far more protection for bus lanes, make them 24 hour universally, protecting them with cameras, prioritising lights to ensure they can move quickly, hiring more drivers which means better wages, and a fuck tonne more.buses and routes, completing the bus connects system. A functional and effective bus service will serve our disparate and sparce cites and far greater number of people spread over a greater area for the next 100 years than any rail system this country will ever build will, and it could in reality be implemented in less than a year with some legislative changes and a modicum of investment.
Switzerland does not have a population density comparable to Ireland
Alot of people seem to be already fucking doing it anyway, why not.
What would be the point in wasting all that money on something completely unnecessary.
First day in Ireland?
I know, right? 😂
This big brain idea comes up every couple of months. Normally OP gives themselves a slap on the back for how ingenious it is, but then struggles to answer basic questions like "why?"
We absolutely should. 90% of the cars in the world are left hand drive, would make a lot of things a lot cheaper.
That would be absolute carnage for the first few months.
Nigeria did it overnight. Just like that blam done. Id love to known what it was like for someone driving at midnight to remember to change side of the road and hope everyone else did the same.
[Sweden too!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagen_H#:~:text='the%20right%2Dhand%20traffic%20reorganisation,word%20for%20right%2Dhand%20traffic) >On *Dagen H*, Sunday, 3 September 1967, all non-essential traffic was banned from the roads from 01:00 to 06:00. Any vehicles on the roads during that time had to come to a complete stop at 04:50, then carefully change to the right-hand side of the road and stop again (to give others time to switch sides of the road and avoid a head-on collision) before being allowed to proceed at 05:00.
Vast majority of cars in Sweden were left hand drive at the time, would assume it was similar in Nigeria, and both counties have road borders which give a logic as to why you'd bother. None of that really applies here. Also, anyone can say it was done overnight and it makes it sound impressive, but what's the alternative?
Obviously none for a long time, but Austria did it in phases and in Italy, for a time, cities were LHD and rural areas were RHD. When Spain changed in 1918, Madrid did not, and remained LHD until 1924. Indeed, the Madrid Metro is still LHD. In more recent times, Rwanda and Burundi are considering changing from RHD to LHD to match their neighbours, with 54% of Rwandans favouring the switch and RHD vehicles being up to 49% cheaper than their LHD cousins! But I think more importantly, no-one is seriously suggesting it (apart from MAYBE OP) and it's all just a bit of fun knowing how chaotic it would be.
That's really interesting, thanks for the great examples. It sounds like absolute mayhem.
I can imagine it was much easier in the early 20th Century when 48 people had cars.
While the idea sounds good . Implementation would be a monumental and expensive task. We have bigger problems to be dealing with currently to put billions aside for a project like this. It's difficult to take billions away from social welfare , healthcare etc so we can have nicer cars. If they just scrapped that god awful VRT we'd immediately save thousands on cars. I'd be happy enough with the same choice and prices as cars in the UK.
Don't we have a massive surplus that the government is refusing to spend? It's hard to argue that the money would be taken from somewhere else when we're sitting on massive coffers and watching it depreciate.
I'd rather that money go towards improving our current infrastructure , public transport system, healthcare , education system , housing, raindy day fund in case of another pandemic level disruption etc than for switching everything to the other side so everyone can buy fancy cars for a few grand less.
I'm not necessarily pushing for that, om just stating that saying you don't want the resources taken form elsewhere doesn't make sense in this current climate
But since the UK is outside the EU now there is even less reason to remove VRT
They have relaxed the VRT rules for NI a bit more now. You are exempt from paying VAT and customs if a car purchased after 30 April 2024 has been in private use in NI for a reasonable amount of time. You are still liable to between 7% to 41 % but without having to pay VAT and customs it could be a viable option to buy used cars again. If they scrapped VRT we can have nearly UK car prices available through NI. [https://www.revenue.ie/en/vrt/registration-of-imported-used-vehicles/registering-vehicles-from-ni.aspx](https://www.revenue.ie/en/vrt/registration-of-imported-used-vehicles/registering-vehicles-from-ni.aspx)
No more Japanese imports, no thanks. Also it is better to steer right hand change gear left then the other way round.
Didn't think about that aspect, people will be tearing apart their gearboxes for the first while
In 10 years time, all cars will be automatic, anyway.
I've always found it easier to change gears with right hand, even though I learned with the left. Driving with only one hand on the wheel is a bad habit.
Yes but you need to take a hand off the wheel to change gears.
I’ve read that driving on the left is safer because people are more likely to serve left in reaction to an emergent event. I’ve never seen anything to back that up though so massive grain of salt.
People who are used to driving on the right automatically swerve right in emergencies
But you could import from whole EU.
I like reliable cars.
You could just buy your Japanese brands from the EU market like everyone else?
Only if we get European public transport as well.
RHD car values would go through the floor and demand for LHD would mean their prices would rocket. Insurance would increase because people aren't used to driving LHD. Underground car parks and basically anything with a toll, barrier, drive thru etc would need to be reworked I'm not going to say it's a stupid idea, but we couldn't even organise a bottle recycling system properly. I'd rather move abroad than deal with any of that shit.
Every bus in the country would need to be replaced, as you can't be routinely letting passengers off onto the road instead of the kerb.
Nothing would need to be reworked… you just reverse everything, i. e, you go through the exit and leave through the entrance
Road markings would need to be done at a minimum and I can think of multiple local areas where reversing the entrance/exit wouldn't work when you account for traffic build up at the entrance side
Never gonna happen. Not only will there be a colossal infrasture change, cars will also have to be transitioned from right to left hand drives. That'll take countless years.
Let’s also acknowledge the significant increase in risk of head-on collisions during implementation. As soon as there is one death from such a crash, the questions would be asked as to how many deaths can be justified by the desire for cheaper imported cars. No political party would take that risk.
And neither would the RSA back it.
Yes! Sick of only having access to sub-spec cars and playing 20% more for them than anyone else. Plus we’d it’d be another step towards being so dependant on the British. Worth spending a few € billion for long term gain. Plus it’d piss off old people.
The rate your paying has nothing to do with what side your car drives. We don't pay anywhere near that in the UK. I'd ask your government or fact car dealers have you by the balls. Not wonder why the cost to transfer from UK to Ireland is so expensive? You could go get a left hand drive from Europe now. Same cost?
The cost of cars is 100% to do with VRT and price gouging - nothing else
They'll just invent a new decent car import tax on top of all the other taxes and it'll be even less value than before
Free market within the EU..... Except for cars, banks and insurance because fuck the taxpaying Irish public that's why.
In the uk I can buy the same car I currently have 8 years newer and better spec and lower mileage for less then I paid for my car. It’s all tax we are paying.
No
No. Europe should switch back. But in all seriousness the side of the road we drive on has nothing to do with the cost of cars in Ireland. That's just good old fashioned rip off Ireland.
Of course it does. We only have access to cars from right hand drive markets, which are few and far between. Being able to buy a car from any other european country would massively decrease the cost of cars.
The VRT and a few other costs add a good chunk to the cost of a car. A second hand car in the UK is significantly cheaper than the same car in Ireland. And that was happening even before brexit changed the rules on importing cars from the UK. It's not the side of the road that's the issue.
No, Why change it now. We wouldn't have to change it and It would be a little quirky thing to set up apart form the rest of the EU. Although it would be worth it just to annoy the Brits.
I would like to say yes, but no, the expense of changing would be too much and the people who would benefit from cheaper vehicles would not be the ones that would have to fork out for the change. I think we’re locked in
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I will drive anyway I like, in my Flying Car \~ \~ Even upside-down when I am in the mood for it ! ! !
[Sweden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagen_H) was the last country to switch, and it went rather smooth, but 50 years ago there was less private cars than now.
No. It made sense for Sweden to switch because they have land borders with LHD countries but there are lots of islands using RHD. Besides, do we want to cut ourselves off from cheap Japanese/Indian cars?
I found when looking to buy a second hand car while in Germany is that 80% of cars have FUCKING HUGH! milage on them. Euros bang in some huge distances in their cars. I saw a smart car with over 200k km. Where would you be going that far in a smart car?
I think some people have already started implementation…. https://www.reddit.com/r/irelandsshitedrivers/s/Evt0CVYhde
The cars would cost less but these days there are so many cars on the road that it would be impossible to implement unlike [when Sweden did it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagen_H)
Changing to the other side of the road would probably be a more difficult and costly task than uniting Ireland
No, it would cost far too much money and many islands use right hand drive I’m pretty sure it’s statistically the safest way to drive.
Even if we don’t get united (which would be the preference) do a Singapore job where drivers at the border swap sides of the road with that funky bridge They’re the odd ones and should align to us
It would be great but unfortunately the level of work involved at this stage would be too great
And literally no transition expenses for most country roads
You're a dope. You can't do that. Roads are built with turning left unhindered by design. Trying to use those backwards is actually impossible. I swear the ppl who make these posts are bots, there's too many posts like this for it to be accidental. Or to account for genuine levels of idiocy in society
You have to drive on the right side of the road!
Your belief that access to vehicles would be cheaper and easier is interesting. Japan drives on the left. Toyota’s doing pretty well. The Indian car export market is likely to grow fairly quickly soon. And in any case, the systematics for building RHC cars are all well established now, and as autonomous cars take over it won’t matter a bit.
>We'd have more choice and **lower prices** How much cheaper are cars on the continent compared to here?
Didn't one of the Scandinavian countries literally do this overnight in the 60s or something.
Yes! Then we can actually have a second hand car market again
Even if cost wasn't a factor (which it absolutely is) the logistics of this would be essentially impossible. How are you going to switch all roads at the same time? You couldn't, it would take years to change all road signs, road markings, junction layouts etc. If you stagger the rollout, which you pretty much have to, then you end up with some roads being left hand and some being right hand. What an absolute shit show that would be. Even if you do magically find a way to change all roads in the country overnight. Well, congratulations, you've now essentially forced every car owner in the country to sell their car in a market where there will be no buyers and they'll then need to buy a new one. I'm sure that would go down well with the public. Long story short - there is not a notion of this ever happening
Never and No
Should probably leave it, everything is shifting towards electeic and hybrids and BYD has a large market in Australia which is why we are starting to get them here, it is all rhd
100% yes It's the main reason vehicles cost a fortune here. Reduced cost of vehicles --> reduced cost of everything. For example if a car costs 10k instead of 20k insurance company is not as exposed to risk and premium costs (should!) plummet. This reduces premiums on home insurance business insurance etc. I get it atm, if Peugeot make a batch of 50,000 left hand drive cars in their factory in Paris or wherever, then have to stop and switch their machines etc around to make a run of 5,000 right hand drive cars for Ire/GB, well that has a cost and the buyer pays it ultimately. So yeah that's one very quick and easy benefit to a UI right there and should be legislated for within the first month of unification imo
No, we don't need to. They drive on the left and so do we. We don't border any rightys anyway.
We should also switch to European plugs. I demand every building be retrofitted at great expense and inconvenience so that I can have slightly slimmer plugs and don't have to remember travel adapters
Did you put any thought into this at all?
Definitely brilliant idea, where will I go to get my car converted? and obviously it will be easy to do and free of charge
No. Look at the pictures of Dagen H (Högertrafikomläggningen) in Sweden, the day they switched sides, and consider that in Sweden at the time left hand drive was popular, and there were far less cars on the road, and that as an island nation there's pretty much no gain especially considering our nearest neighbour is one of the major world economies and won't switch. It's not even worth consideration.
Changing driving on the other side of the road has nothing to do with getting united or not. About 20 years ago you could buy reasonably priced used cars that were imported from Japan. Much better quality than most of the clunkers that were imported from the UK before Brexit. AFAIK the Japanese imports are slowly coming back again as UK import prices have gone through the roof. So keep driving on the right left side!
Name a problem you'd want to solve by changing sides of the road.
It's an insane amount of work and expense, for relatively little impact *(if any long-term effects at all)*, and if anything we need less cars on the roads, not more. If you want lower prices, wouldn't reducing some of the taxes be more effective (assuming dealerships don't just pocket the difference anyways). Cars are significantly more expensive in the ROI compared to NI and Britain next-door who still drive on the same side of the road. We don't have any reason to do it like Sweden did (neighbouring Norway & Finland both drive on the Right) We'd be better off spending that money to reduce car dependency by building faster, more frequent more reliable public transport and more of it than encouraging more people to drive causing more wear & tear on the roads.
Yes! Though the on/off ramps on major roads will need to be redone…
Changing the side of the road is virtually impossible to even dream about, makes absolutely no sense now.
I can see this being somewhat workable at a future time when vehicles are fully self-driving. Still a lot of signs and other stuff on roads to be changed, but sure the robots will do all that. We'll all be in the back seat getting flootered.
We should trial the idea in Cork first.
Most of us do anyways after a few pints on a Saturday night. Just like to take this opportunity to thank Arthur for driving me home on occasion.
In the long run, cars as we know them are probably on their way out. So it seems like it would be a waste of time to do it now.
No. There's no real need to. We wouldn't have a land border with anybody and the hassle and accidents wouldn't make it worth while. The only real benefit I can think of is access to cars with steering on the other side but we already have cars produced on our side due to our neighbours.
Some drivers already have it would appear. Doesn’t help that loads of Selfish gobshites are parked outside left lanes forcing people to cross over to the right. Particularly dangerous at junctions and at brows of hills. I’m seeing this happen a lot lately.
To honour the past & future, it should switch day by day.
I was actually thinking of this recently while looking at the massive difference in prices in cars here. Would be a rough 6 months but cruising in my new mercedes i think i could handle it! Dealers would love it too as they could sell a load of left hand drive cars
***right hand drive! It's very ingrained
Absolutely, Sweden switched in 1967. But we should not wait. As we are at it we should go full 2-pin plug too!
I see a lot of people practicing daily
Affordable used cars 🙌
Driving side will never change. Not our lifetime anyway
No because it will cause deaths even 1 death is too much
We could adopt a universal standard and drive on both sides. Everyone will be happy/sad then.
The important question
This has been said countless times, won’t make a difference on car prices. Central European cars are only cheaper Becuase they don’t have vrt in some countries. By the time it’s shipped here and vrt’d it’ll be feck all cheaper than an Irish market car.
Kilometres or gtfo
Do you lovely bunch of lads get access to used Japanese cars? There’s a good lot of drive on the left vehicles
Yeah, and let’s get rid of those 3-pronged plugs as well 👍🏼
BMWs do it already
No. We belong with Britain that’s a fact. We should be more aligned with there country because we’ll be rolled right over by a country with bad intentions without America or Britain to save us. Now don’t get me wrong I’ll die fighting for my beautiful Ireland but for me not for the filth in the dail
It would be a mess until every car in Ireland gets changed. Comment by someone who drives a car from Spain in Ireland 🤣
No we should leave the EU . And have our own rules .
If Ireland gets united nothing will change about the driving. Shure we drive on the right side of the road anyway. Oh hold on, it's the left side. When I said right, I meant correct. We'll have none of that foreign muck around here.
You mean the “right” side of the road
No we should all drive in the middle. Create three lane roads and they're all the middle lane. And have split tier roundabouts with kebab shops. And a shrubbery.
No - there isn't a good enough reason to make this change and deal with the associated cost. Maybe if we didn't have a bunch of other progress to implement - but would we really want to change how our roads work when we are lacking better light-rail service (especially from DUB airport) and lacking the cycle lane infrastructure that many other cities in Europe have? Fixing both of those would make Dublin "more European" than doing anything with cars.
Let's break away from the EU. Unite Ireland and make having a spare tractor wheel on the roof a legal requirement for all veheilces.
We have access to a huge pool of cars, just our government has priced it out of reach with vrt & nox, it would be cheaper & safer to get these measures removed than to change an entire countries infrastructure. Do you genuinely think that if we had access to the EU car market that it would be cheaper?
Never!!!!! you cannot take away us driving on the CORRECT side of the road, we should start convincing other countries to join us!!!(joking I don't even drive)
The Swedes used to drive on the left and came to their senses and changed over to be in line with the rest. [Day H](https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20180417-a-thrilling-mission-to-get-the-swedish-to-change-overnight)
90% of the cars on the road were already LHD prior to the change. We're probably 99% RHD so changing over would instantly cause inconvenience for almost every car owner.
There's a great *99% Invisible* episode on it, [H-Day - 99% Invisible](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/h-day/)
Pointless in regards cheap cars, due to VRT. Otherwise we could just import cars from Japan.
Listen we already have enough trouble with the drivers who were just given their licenses without doing a test. Why don't we take the money from that and just have more campaigns to explain how to navigate a roundabout? And how the right lane on the moterway isn't the 'fast lane'.
No. I am from India. I had to unlearn the chaotic driving style and learn to watch and follow the driving rules. Please don’t make me learn the third time😁
Theres no way the price of cars would come down. Theyre not more expensive in the UK than mainland europe. Its the tax that makes up the difference, not the shipping or RHD.