The Right Way

I am at the Blommenhof Hotel, a part of the Best Western chain. I think we are in Nykoping, Sweden, but I'm not absolutely sure.  We are south of Stockholm, where we will go tomorrow for a play day, in which we plan to cover a few museums and see the sights.  What's important is that the wifi is strong and free. After my sporadic and often frustrating and costly experiences elsewhere, I am eternally grateful.

I've also enjoy the comfort I've felt in Brussels today and now here of being a passenger in cars that drive on the right-hand side of the road as the good Lord intended them to be. Driving or being a passenger in Ireland and England is disconcerting for me, occasionally terrifying. Drivin in the left seems to me to be a crime against the natural order of things.

I know this is true. If you observe people on the streets of Dublin or London, Cork or Brighton as I so recently have done, you will observe that they keep to the right. When people self-organize they follw this pattern.  When they conform to laws, they drive on the left.

Comments

[Ewan McIntosh]

And what about the Scottish driving where we drove wherever there was space left ;-)

[shel israel]

Ewan,

I wouldn't know. Rick and I had our eyes closed and were hugging each other in terror.

[Henk Kleynhans]

I found it confusing in London as to which way to pass. On the escalators in the subways, it says "stand to the right", yet in other high-traffic areas on the same subways it will say "keep left".

I heard a story once that it was a Roman law that decreed that people should keep to the right, as it made people feel a lot more safe. Reason: As most people are right-handed, keeping left gives everyone an opportunity to quickly drop the lance and skewer the guy coming from the other side.

In South Africa we drive on the left. I wish I had a lance though... ;)

[Kate Farrell]

A friend who was doing research in Malawi told me that the government there decided to change from driving on the left to driving on the right. In their wisedom they felt that citizens would have problems adjusting so they decided to phase in the changes, starting with buses!