Driving here is unusual. I'm not talking about the fact that the driver sits where the passenger should be and they drive on the left hand side of the road. That was surprisingly easy to get the hang of. The pedals are the same, the shift pattern is the same, you're just sitting on the wrong side of the car (at least according to the US and about 90% of the rest of world). What surprised me about driving here is that you can walk into any rental agency and rent a car. No questions asked. I expected to at least see some "So you want to drive in England" pamphlets or a poster about the rules of the road hanging somewhere, but there was nothing. The man behind the counter took my info, pointed to our car and off we went. I was just handed the keys to a 2 ton murder machine without so much as a "don't forget to drive on the left." The rules here take some getting use to. And by "rules" I mean things that I made up as I drove around trying not to smash into stuff. I had no idea what I was doing. There are some similarities of course. Green means go, red means stop, yellow means... go? The signals here have a yellow light that flashes before the light turns green. I assume it is to allow everyone to prepare for the green, but the drivers all anticipate the yellow and speed off as soon as the light changes from red. Most of the cars were half way through the intersection before the green even came on. It took some time but I adapted pretty quickly. Yellow means go. Easy. What was not as easy to figure out was the roundabouts. Just about every intersection is a roundabout. You approach them at full speed look right and, if there are no cars, you enter the most terrifying driving experience of your life. There are double decker buses, long haul semis, dump trucks, tiny cars,
big vans, all manner of wheeled monstrosity spinning around in a giant
vortex. It is so stressful, and you have such a short amount of time to make any decisions that when it's all over PTSD sets in and your mind blocks out the experience. You come out the other side shaking as if waking up from a nightmare and miraculously you are going in the right direction. All your passengers rejoice with sighs of relief. High fives are exchanged. Sweat is wiped from brows. And together you laugh and mock the experience. That is until you all realize with horror that there are more these. Many many more, one after the other as if you are trapped in some sort of giant twisted washing machine stuck on the spin cycle. They are everywhere and no one seems to know what they are doing in one. Usually for large roundabouts there are at least 2 lanes that guide you through it. The far left lane, I surmised, was for people who wanted to leave at the first first turn off. If you wanted to leave on the second or third one you stayed in the right lane. It made sense, except for the fact that no one seemed to be doing this. When I thought I had just about figured it out I would get cut off or I would cut someone else off. People seem to just enter and go wherever the hell they wanted. I figured out the best way to get around one of these was to shut my eyes, mash the gas, and pray.Another thing that was weird was there were practically no speed limits posted. Plenty of "Reduce Speed" signs but no signs telling you what speed you were supposed to be at. Once in a while I would see one but I was never sure whether it was supposed to be in kilometers per hour or miles per hour. In one stretch of road the limit seemed to switch between the two. Also on a few freeway construction zones there were two posted limits 10mph and 30mph. So which was it? I never knew because everyone seemed to be doing 50.
Some other strange things are, cars are allowed to park against the direction of traffic so you can't assume the road is flowing in any one direction based on the parked cars. This is especially dangerous while walking. Also, many roads here are very narrow so you have to drive around parked cars constantly. And speed cameras are everywhere. And they seemed to do nothing to deter speeding drivers.
It was a mess, but it was fun and I am totally doing it again. The next time perhaps I should go over the UK driver's handbook before setting off. Or not, because where's the fun in that? Murder machine.
