Why we drive on the ride side of the road

Did you ever wonder why in the United States, we keep to the right but in some other countries keeping to the left is the norm? The Lawrence Locomotive newspaper offered this explanation on Dec. 24, 1904, which was reprinted from the Chicago Tribune. So read the following story and you can answer the question.

On a bridge in the city of Victoria, B.C., announced a gentleman driver, who had handled the reins in the good old days when Commodore Vanderbilt and his speedy roadsters were familiar figures upon the smooth pikes of southern New York, there were more collisions every day than upon any other bridge in the world.

Railroad collisions, do you mean?, queried a youngster who had just left his smart looking runabout at the stables and joined the small group on the club plaza which was absorbing horse lore from the veteran.

No, sir, I don’t mean railroad collisions. I mean head-on collisions between vehicles, and face to face collisions between pedestrians. The reason for them all is that the bridge is the spot where the American rule of the road clashes with English rule of the road. Americans always keep to the right and the Canadians always keep to the left. The result is one continual mix-up.

Did you ever stop to consider how strange it is that in a custom of this kind, which is so important and so often used, the American colonies should have worked out a rule diametrically opposed to the mother country? Why is it that in England people on the road always keep to the left, while in the United States they always keep to the right?

Nobody ventured to reply.

Why is it, continued the speaker, that we now call the horse that is nearest to us the off horse and the horse that is furthermost away from us the nigh horse?

The young man of the runabout murmured a few indistinct words about ox teams.

Right you are!, exclaimed the veteran, And I’m glad to see your mind runs upon something else than railroads and automobiles and other modern abominations. The humble and almost obsolete ox is responsible for all those collisions in Victoria.

In England, way back before they ever had carriages or vehicles of any kind, when armored knights on horseback used to be about the only people that one met on the roads, the custom of keeping to the left sprang up, and almost reasonable it was. Because in those days the knights were always looking for trouble, and they never knew who was going to hand them a blow from a broadsword. So they always took care to pass other travelers with their sword arm toward the other, simply as a matter of precautionary self-defense. This naturally meant that they should hunch over to the left edge of the road and present their armed right hand to the passerby.

Isn’t that a pretty fanciful explanation?, asked one of the circle who was bolder than his companions.

Yes, I think it is, and I only give it to you for what it is worth. But its funny that reasoning in the same way can explain why Americans keep to the right. In Colonial days, the peril on the road did not come from travelers, but from the savages lying in ambush in the surrounding forests. Therefore, the New England settler took care to present his right arm to the source of possible danger and consequently rode on the right side of the road. His reasons were unconsciously the same as those of the Knight of King Arthur, but by acting upon them he created an entirely different custom.

But I don’t think it was the knight or the colonial horseback rider that originated the national rules of the road. It was the carter and his ex driver. The carter was the person who made the greatest use of the English highways and byways as soon as the country developed enough to need a transportation system. Long caravans of heavy drays passed over the roads, each driven by a man who rode upon the left hand horse The left hand animal was originally picked out, I suppose, because a horse is mounted on the left side and because a position on the left horse of the pair brought the right arm over in the center of the field of action and permitted free exercise of the whip.

Being mounted on the left hand horse, the carter naturally drew over to the left hand side of the road when he wished to dismount in order to avoid the mud in the middle of the road, into which he would plunge if he pulled over to the right side and then got down to terra firma. And having dismounted on the left side, he would naturally trudge along that edge of the road with his team and the other teams, similarly situated, would, as a matter of course, keep to the left to avoid crisscrossing.

In the American colonies, ox carts were the first and only vehicles used. The slow moving draft animals were not controlled by reins. A whip or goad being the only instrument for guidance. To wield this effectively over the backs of the team, the right hand was required, and to give it full play, the driver sat on the left hand side of the driver’s seat. This at once led him to turn to the right to pass another team, because in this way he was able to best judge the distances between the two wagons and also to pass the time of day with the other traveler.

We used to talk this whole question over and over in the good old days when the road houses of York State furnished better food and drink to the driving crowd than you can get at the Waldorf now. And we finally decided that the ox cart theory was the best explanation of how the American rule of the road came to differ from that of England. There were some other pretty good suggestions though.

What were they?, asked the runabout youth.

Well some New Jersey men advance the proposition that the early American, sitting on the right hand corner of the driver’s seat used to turn to the right because by so doing he was able to get a better look at the edge of the road. They claimed there was more danger a vehicle would fall off the narrow road than that it would be smashed into by the passing vehicle. Therefore, the driver wished to be able to give his best attention to the hit of his outer wheel.

Another reason for the American change from left to right was said to be the deep snows of New England. It was asserted that whenever two sleighs had to pass both had to pull off the beaten track into the untrodden snow and both drivers were instinctively turn to the right in order they be nearest to the danger point. Sitting on the right side of the seat, they were in position to jump out and prop up their sleigh should it show a disposition to upset.

In some vicinities this predilection for the right hand was so strong that the horse was hitched over to the right side of the cutter, so his feet would tramp down a path for the right runner.

It’s odd, concluded the veteran, that in the different provinces of Canada, different customs prevail. In Ontario and Quebec, drivers turn to the right and in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, they turn to the left. In France the rule of right prevails. In different parts of Germany and Austria, different habits obtain. You often have to change from left to right or vice versa when crossing some unimportant frontier.