(CNN) — I drove into rural Amish country in Pennsylvania to see a man on a wagon. I have been searching for an answer to a question since 2015 when I went to England for work.
As I was driving around London, very carefully in a Mini Cooper, I asked myself: Why am I driving on the “wrong” side of the road? I am from the United States, which began as a group of former British colonies. We speak the same language, more or less. But we drive in the opposite direction, and sometimes that has dangerous consequences.
And the UK isn’t the only country, of course, to do it the other way around. It turns out that about 30% of the world’s countries require driving on the left and another 70% or so on the right. How this happened is a twisted story.
Napoleon Bonaparte played a major role in Europe. In America, Henry Ford usually gets the credit, but that is actually not entirely true, as he is much older than Ford. Right-hand traffic not only predates the automobile, it predates the existence of the United States.
That’s how I ended up in an old tobacco drying barn in Conestoga, Pennsylvania, looking at a wagon a few days after testing the Tesla Cybertruck, its modern electric descendant. I was greeted by John Stehman, whose family has farmed the land in the area since 1743. He is president of the Conestoga Area Historical Society, and as I learned researching the history of roads and driving, the Conestoga Wagon was key to it all. . History.
Wagon train
These large wagons, with their high arched fabric roofs, became a symbol of America’s westward expansion as they transported the goods of eastern pioneers to the frontier. However, in the early 18th century, western Pennsylvania was a distant frontier.
Local carpenters and blacksmiths developed Conestoga wagons to transport goods, including agricultural products and goods traded between Native Americans, to markets in Philadelphia. Philadelphia, at that time, was one of the largest cities in the colonies. A charioteer could ride one of the horses or sit on a “lazy board” slipped from the side of the chariot. But when more active control was needed, he walked alongside the horses, pulling levers and ropes.
An original 19th century Conestoga wagon at the Conestoga Area Historical Society in Conestoga, Pennsylvania in 2024. (Peter Valdes-Dapena/CNN)
“I’ll give them a verbal command: ‘Gee,’ ‘Hall,’ or whatever, and they’ll hear it,” Stehmann explains. “I too pulled this leather rope a couple of times.”
I imagined myself going down a long dirt road in front of a team of horses pulling this blue cart. I’m right-handed, like most people. Precisely for this reason, the Conestoga wagon had controls on the left side, near the driver’s right hand. It meant that the driver was in the middle of the road and the cart was on the right.
Eventually, there was so much commerce and traffic between Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and Philadelphia that America’s first major highway was built. The Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike Road opened in 1795. According to MG Leigh’s book “Ways of the World”, among the rules included in his charter was that all traffic had to travel on the right, like a Conestoga wagon. .
In 1804, New York became the first state to require traffic to keep to the right on all roads and highways.
1915 Ford Model T (Three Lions/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Some credit Henry Ford with standardizing American traffic on the right side of the road because, in 1908, the Ford Motor Company placed the steering wheel on the left side of the very popular Model T. However, in reality, Ford was simply responding. Driving habits that were, to a large extent, established much earlier.
What’s really strange is that most people in the rest of Europe, except Britain, drive on the right, like Americans.
Napoleon’s march into Europe
Why are British outsiders even on their own continent? Credit or blame the French.
No
Color engraving depicting pedestrians and carriages on the boulevards of Paris, France, circa 1750. (adoc-photos/Corbis/Getty Images)
The French revolutionary government of Maximilien Robespierre (known for leading a late 18th-century “reign of terror” in which thousands were guillotined) mandated that everyone drive on the right.
By long cultural convention the left side of the road was reserved for carriages and those on horseback. In other words, the richest class. Pedestrians, that is, the poorest people, moved to the right. Forcing everyone to go on the same side of the road, besides being good for traffic, was about breaking down these distinctions between social classes.
The upper classes probably agreed because, in those days, looking aristocratic was not only fashionable, but downright dangerous.
A street in Stockholm, Sweden, on September 3, 1967 at 5 a.m., when a car changed from left-hand drive to right-hand drive. (Classic Picture Library/Alamy Stock Photo)
Napoleon is said to have spread French policy as his armies marched across Europe. Some evidence of this can be found by looking at the 1812 map of Napoleon’s empire.
A nation that was neither a subject nor an ally of Napoleon. That nation was Sweden. So the Swedes drove to the left, until one surprisingly calm day in 1967, drivers turned to the right.
In 1872 London Bridge was packed with horses, carriages and pedestrians. As early as 1756, regulations were made to regulate rail traffic in London. (Guildhall Library and Art Gallery/Heritage Images/Getty Images)
Britain took literally the opposite path to France.
Historian Ley hypothesizes that these were used with various types of transportation. Britain had fewer industrial-sized cars and more small cars and individual riders. Riders prefer to keep their right hand towards oncoming traffic and stay to the left to fight if necessary.
Dangerous driving
Whatever the reasons, sometimes switching sides has real consequences, and in this case there have been serious accidents.
William Van Tassel, AAA’s head of driver training, recommends that drivers take extra steps to focus when driving on the other side. One of those measures, for example, is to turn off the radio.
“I think it’s okay to talk to yourself while you’re driving. It forces you to focus on driving,” he said. “Okay, far left or far right. Check the traffic to the right instead of the left. Whatever, whatever works.”
A pedestrian crossing in London, England in September 2009. People visiting the country from abroad may need to remember to look for traffic coming from the opposite direction to what they are used to. (Yevgenia Gorbulsky/Alamy Stock Photo)
At Avis Budget Group, which rents many cars to Americans driving in the United Kingdom, agents make sure to remind customers to drive on the left. They also take other steps.
“Furthermore, all of our vehicles across the UK have ‘Drive on the Left’ stickers and at key locations we provide ‘Drive on the Left’ bracelets, which we recommend our customers always wear on their left wrist as a reminder of which side to drive on. . about the road to drive,” Avis Budget said in a statement.
AAA’s Van Tassel also recommends adding a passenger as a second set of eyes, something that helped me while driving there, although it was occasionally frustrating.
