Don’t know left from right
I’m hoping that your combined experience, knowledge and general cleverness will help an old man. I’ve worked in this wonderful industry of ours for 20-plus years, but I’ve been stumped by some questions from my 13-year-old daughter: “Why do we have the steering wheel on the right
side of the car and drive on the left side of the road when others do the opposite? Who decided this and what was their reason? Why isn’t the wheel on the left and we drive on the left?”
We were discussing the opportunity to buy a seven-seat Tesla Model Y from the US for use in Britain, and in explaining that the wheel would be “on the wrong side”, I was then hit with the challenge above.
Mike Bennett
Via email
There’s evidence to suggest we’ve kept left since Roman times, likely mainly because most people are right-handed so could that way more easily interact with oncoming traffic. It became UK law in the 1835 Highways Act – KC