Look Right ! Mind the Gap !? Drive Farther to the Right !?!?
Feb 05 '03 (Updated Dec 12 '03)
The Bottom Line Terrorism? As a traveler, the thing most likely to injure or kill you is . . . an accident! Here are some precautions unique to the UK.
Contrary to what you might think, terrorism is not the greatest threat to life or limb when you visit the UK. Just like anywhere else in the highly developed countries, you're orders of magnitude more likely to be killed or injured in an accident.
Look Right !
Your mother always told you to look both ways before crossing the street. But most Americans tend to look left just before stepping off the curb and only then to the right. That's the habit we acquire because most of us live in an environment of two-way streets with traffic moving on the right. [I know, lots of you live in places where one-way streets predominate.]
In the UK, this habit can be deadly because traffic moves on the left, and thus approaches people crossing the street from the right. In London and some other UK cities, you'll see the words LOOK RIGHT or LOOK LEFT written in the street at many crossing points. You should follow the advice, or better yet, your mother's advice: look carefully both ways before even setting foot in the street.
Mind the Gap !?
There's a great innovation on the new extension of the Jubilee underground line in London: a glass barrier between the platform and the tracks. After the train stops in the station, its doors line up with doors in the barrier, both sets of which then open for passengers to enter and exit the train. The result? No more accidental or deliberate falls onto the tracks in front of oncoming trains.
Unfortunately, very few stations anywhere in the world have this safety feature. Please, please! Stand well back from the edge of the platform, and keep your children away from the edge until the train comes to a complete stop.
Unfortunately, there are two more dangers in the underground system: non-level loading and curved station platforms. On some trains you'll have to take a small step up or down when moving from the platform to the train or vice versa. Furthermore, in curved stations, there may be a gap of several inches between the platform and the door sill. Thus the ubiquitous London underground public address announcement: "Mind the gap!"
Drive Farther to the Right !?!?
Most Americans just won't drive in the UK because of the perceived confusion of driving on the left. Others blanch at the thought of the dreaded roundabouts. Those folks are probably right; they just shouldn't drive in the UK.
For the rest of us it's fairly easy to perform the left-right mental flip of our habitual driving rules: For example, 1) turn left freely when faced with a green light, but wait for oncoming traffic to clear before you turn right, 2) on a multi-lane road, the right lane is the fast or passing lane, 3) freeway (motorway) exits are normally on the left, etc.
The real problem--and it can be dangerous--is that your rental car will have its steering wheel on the right. Here's what I'm talking about. When you learn to drive, you unconsciously learn to center your car in the traffic lane using visual clues involving the relative position of your eyes and the lane markings. When you shift to a right-hand driver's seat, you'll have an unconscious tendency to drive as much as three feet farther to the left to produce the same visual cues.
Clearly, that can lead to serious problems like encroaching on whatever is to your left, such as another traffic lane, a curb, a ditch, the pump island at a gas station etc. This can be especially hazardous since many secondary roads are narrow and sometimes lined with stone walls.
The bottom line: Be hyperconscious at all times of your position in the lane. If you see your left seat passenger flinching a lot, it's a pretty good clue that you're driving too far to the left.
Useful Links: Save Money While Traveling in the UK
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