Every country I went to drove on the left side of the road. They also all walked on the left side. I'm not sure how one affects the other, but I do know that all of them walked on the left as well. This can cause some near misses if you come from a culture that moves on the right.

I wondered a lot on my trip about why this divergence exists. Why doesn't the whole world drive on the same side, be it right or left? Surely a similar evolution of direction would have occurred in all areas of the world. I found out why, or at least the current prevailing theory as to why, and I discuss it below. First, though, I'll tell you about my trip.

OK, I'll tell you one theory I had on my trip. All the countries I visited, with the exception of Japan, were/are part of Britain. Britain drives on the left. So, avoiding investigating why it developed that way in the first place, that might explain why they currently drive that way. But why Japan? What does Britain have to do with them? Or is it a case of convergent evolution? That is, is there actually no relationship at all? I'll tell you in a bit.

Here's what I learned first hand as I traveled: if you drive on one side of the road you will walk on that side too. The entire culture associates locomotion of all sorts with a certain side of the road/sidewalk/what-have-you, and passing with the side that follows from that direction of travel. Think about it. Those of you who live in the US (or, indeed, most of the world): imagine approaching someone as you cross a plaza or some other open ground in your home country. If you both happen to pick the same line, such that you would bump in to each other, you will both naturally veer to the right at the last minute, so as to avoid smacking into each other. Granted this doesn't always work, and occasionally that little dance of indecision will ensue.

Usually, though, you pass each other smoothly and go about your day. Imagine, now, that the person coming toward you is from a country that drives on the left. The will naturally veer LEFT as you veer right. See where this leads? If you were going opposite directions this would cause you to end up on the same side! The dance would commence EVERY TIME!

On my trip, you see, I was the foreigner approaching. Even at the end, when I knew better, I would still often lean to the right if I wasn't thinking about it. It is hard to ignore a lifetime's worth of habit and training. Sometimes I would find myself breaking to the left, as I should, without having to tell myself, and that always felt good. I was finally acclimating! I like to try and blend in, learn some of the language and culture, and just generally act like a local. Since my ancestors hailed from Northern Europe, it is understandably easier for me to disappear in a crowd in Scotland than in Japan. However, if you can't even walk properly, you stick out like a sore thumb no matter where you go.

So there's the travel tip for the day: even if you don't plan on driving in the country you visit, you still must know whether the "keep left" or "keep right".

Sydney even has it written on the road at most crosswalks: "Look Left" or "Look Right" as appropriate. Did they paint them just before they hosted the summer Olympics? Were they afraid of a rash of travelers looking the wrong way and getting hit by cars? I'm not sure, but it was quite nice of them to do that. You see that in London occasionally as I recall too.

Here's how driving directions developed. I actually wrote most of this before the above, but decided to put it at the end. Ah, the miracle of computer editing!

I learned somewhere, some history class I think, that the first person to codify directional travel was Napoleon. He found that his troops spent too much time deciding which regiment was going to go to which side when they met head on a narrow road. So he decreed that everyone would keep to the right. This rule did speed everything up. As he conquered Europe he brought his rule with him.

I just did a smattering of web research (isn't google great?) and found this site:

http://users.pandora.be/worldstandards/driving%20on%20the%20left.htm

It gives a detailed history of the subject.

It turns out that my fuzzy recollection is actually fairly accurate. Napoleon was the first one to make it a rule, and did spread it around the Continent. Originally, before laws on the subject, in the Middle Ages and such, people tended to ride on the left and so pass on the right side. Since most people are right handed, the preferred it if strangers passed on that side. See, that is their sword arm, and it is easier to fight someone if they are on that side.

Then came huge teams of horses pulling loads across Europe. They often had no driver's seat, so the teamster would sit on the left rear horse, so his right arm (again because most people have that as the dominant arm) would be free to guide the horses. Someone sitting in this position would naturally want people to pass on the left, so they could better see the edge of their cart pass. This was catching on just as Napoleon came to power, and he made it the standard of his Empire.

The French revolution also encouraged the switch. It seems the aristocrats were clinging to the old ways and rode on the left, which forced the peasants to the right. That is, if everyone on the road was going the same direction, the aristocrats would be on the left and the peasants on the right. But after the revolution, no one wanted to admit they were from the upper classes, so suddenly everyone moved on the right.

Napoleon spread this new trend to every place he invaded. The countries that resisted him continued to ride on the left. For a while Europe was a hodge-podge of rules, with some neighboring countries employing opposite rules. This especially got confusing at unmarked border crossings. The road would continue unbroken, but suddenly everyone would need to switch sides! It was dangerous.

France and Britain became the two main influences in driving direction. If you were a British colony, you drove on the left. A French colony, on the right. America initially drove on the left, but after the revolution we decided to throw off all vestiges of English rule and drive on the right (remember how German lost out on becoming the official language by one vote? They didn't want English as the official one, though, which is why we don't have a law specifying ANY official language). Since France and Britain became the two great colonizing powers, especially in Africa, they managed to divide up much of the rest of the world into its current configuration.

South America drives on the right because Spain did, like most of mainland Europe. Brazil, a Portuguese colony, drives on the right, and Portugal remained on the left after Napoleon. One country in S. America, another former Portuguese country, still drives that way. Brazil does not, though, and the reason is unclear.

The reason Canada drives on the right, despite its Commonwealth status, is that it shares such a long border with the US, and it made sense for the two countries to share a driving direction as well. Also, since Quebec (can't figure out how to do the accent on this thing on this editor), being French, already drove on the right, the rest of Canada bowed to overwhelming peer pressure and drove on the right too.

And that is generally how it stands now. Most of the world drives on the right, and if you don't you probably used to be British. Or are currently British.

An interesting side note: Sweden was one of the last Napoleon holdouts and still drove on the left up to 1967. This was very dangerous, because Finland and Norway had converted to the right long before then, and those three countries shared many open border crossings and road networks. It wouldn't have been so bad if Sweden wasn't in the middle. In the end, despite the reluctance of the populace, the government voted to switch. They did it in prime Swedish fashion. That is, very safely.

The change officially occurred at 5 am on a Sunday morning. Civilians were not allowed on the road for 4 hours before and one hour after the deadline. This gave the government time to switch all the road signs. After the driving moratorium expired a countrywide speed limit came into effect that was very low, so if mistakes were made the resulting accident wouldn't be fatal. The speed limit was raised gradually, and then raised more for some roads and then for highways, until the current graduated system emerged. The process took a month. Isn't that cool?

All of this, though, doesn't explain Japan. They were never a colony. So why do they follow the English system? From what I have found they were always on the left since the Samurai were also mostly right handed and so had the same sword arm preference. They never went through a teamsters phase, possibly because as an island they didn't have a large enough area to cover. Neither did Britain, by the way, which is why they didn't naturally become right side drivers either. Like I said before, Japan and Britain are both islands, and this counts for more than you might think. They share a similar sensibility.

What really sealed the deal, though, was the advent of trains. Remember the Japanese train system I mentioned? Well, the didn't build from native technology; most countries didn't. Japan (meaning the department stores) instead bought from one of the three main rail powers of the time: France, the US and Britain. Two of them drove on the right, and so did their trains. The Japanese ended up going with the British version though, for a multitude of reasons, none of which were necessarily driving direction. Since they did happen to choose the one left driving option (all the stores cooperated), they got trains that drove on the left and this influenced the car driving direction. It wasn't until 1924 that left hand driving became an official rule, but it had been an unwritten rule for centuries. Since they are an island nation, they have no land borders to worry about, and so no shared roads. So Japan drives on the left to this day.

Here's another good site to investigate this, though some of it is the same as the other one:

http://www.i18nguy.com/driver-side.html

Oh, one more thing. Australia and New Zealand get tons of used cars from Japan. According to the Australian native who told me, lots of Japanese, like some Americans, replace their vehicle every few years, but Japanese people don't like to buy used cars. I can see how they might find it unsanitary to drive a vehicle that is not straight out of the factory. This is a boon for Australia and New Zealand, because most of these cars are in excellent shape and the people from these two countries have no qualms about used cars. And since everyone involved drives on the left, the steering wheel is already in place. So it works out great! Cheap cars for the south Pacific and no cars in the junkyard in Japan.

Happy Pentecost! Wear Red!