Why do the English drive on the left?
Strange people, these English, you will immediately think as soon as you become aware of their habit of driving on the left. Why can't they do the same as all other countries and simply drive on the right?
But, is it really that easy to drive on the right? If you've ever made a U-turn on an open road in any rolling vehicle, you'll know that the normal, almost instinctive circling and turning movement is to the left. And even if you are driving along on the road, you will certainly have noticed that it is easier to turn left than right.
An interesting - (English) - explanation of this peculiar tendency to the left, i.e. to the left away from a person's change of location, is of biological origin. Since the heart, considered the most "vital" organ of the human being, is located on the left side of the body, the shield may have been carried on the left arm for this reason from the oldest, warlike antiquity.
While the left hand was occupied in this way, the offensive weapon had to be held in the right. This weapon usually consisted of a sword, which - as we all know - was carried in a scabbard. However, so that the sword could be held quickly and comfortably in the right hand during combat, the scabbard logically had to hang on the left side of the body. In the long eras when the sword was considered the dominant weapon, the horse was used as a means of moving the swordsman, and this is where complications arose. With a sword sheath carried on the left, it was physically impossible to mount the horse from the right side, unless one intended to attempt the acrobatic "wild west leap" from behind on the horse's tail, which was only known among the Arab war tribes at the time. Consequently, the rider was always forced to mount his horse from the left side. In order to be able to mount the horse from the left side, it was understandable that the rider would stand his horse on the left side of the road so as not to expose himself to the traffic on the road while mounting. In this way, as the English say today, left-hand traffic became common practice, except in some "retrograde" countries, while right-hand traffic goes against the biological and historical instincts of mankind.
This argument could perhaps be countered by the objection that the English should also have remembered that the majority of swordsmen at the time were right-handed. But perhaps they prefer to pass over this argument in silence, although they may find this difficult in the long run because the supporters of right-handedness constantly use this argument.
But if the somewhat irreconcilable logic of this reasoning does not sound convincing enough to you with regard to the natural correctness of the English view and that of a good dozen other countries on left-hand traffic, the English will be happy to provide you with other explanations. They are again of a historical and martial nature, and they are also based on the horse. These further explanations - at least the English hope so - should dispel the last doubts.
In the medieval period, when horse-drawn carriage traffic began to develop in England, the roads were so besieged by bandits that coachmen were forced to drive on the left because they had to hold the reins in their left hand so that they could use their free right hand to operate the pistol for defense. And when the car later arrived in England, no one in England could see the point of moving the traffic on the roads to the right and thus overturning the traditional laws of nature, when this solution had satisfied everyone for many centuries - with the exception of bandits, of course.
In fact, some English historians have succeeded in proving the origin of left-hand traffic in even earlier times than the Middle Ages. In the ancient Roman Empire, they assert, traffic used the left-hand side because the coachmen of chariots and other vehicles needed a free space on it to handle their extra-long whip; after all, the whip was the only means of propulsion at the time to increase the speed of travel. And so it came about that this custom of left-hand traffic on roads also reached England and became naturalized there.
If we did not follow the English with regard to the rules of the road, we did so, strangely enough, in one of the most important opinions about rail traffic, namely in the determination of the track gauge of rails. Few people who travel by rail have any idea that the measure of track gauge is over 2000 years old and always leads us back to the inescapable Romans.
When the first railroads in history were built on the English Isles, it was in England that the traditional dimensions of the old Roman roads were transferred to the railroads and thus - with a few exceptions - became the norm for the whole world. The two closest exceptions to us are Spain and Russia.
This article was printed exactly 50 years ago in Automobil Revue 22/1963 and we thought that the explanations are still entertaining and interesting today.
