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Interesting, I didn't know about the blind spot problem for trucks. Is there a reason we drive on the right in America, then? I kind of assumed we just randomly
by chipperyman573 8y ago
Interesting, I didn't know about the blind spot problem for trucks. Is there a reason we drive on the right in America, then? I kind of assumed we just randomly picked it because neither answer solves a problem with the alternative (or the country we copied randomly picked, I don't know the full history), but it seems like there's a pretty solid argument to always drive on the left (at least, there's no reason to drive on the right)
- paradisechris 8y agoIf America drove on the left, the driver side would be on the right instead. This would only shift the truck blind spot to the other side meaning they would still drive opposite either way.
- chipperyman573 8y agoWhy do you have to drive closer to the inside of the street?
- rootusrootus 8y agoProbably because you are routinely driving within a few feet of traffic coming the other way and it's easier to tell where the edge of your vehicle is when you're practically sitting on it versus sitting on the other side of the car.
- kalleboo 8y agoSo that you can see oncoming traffic when passing on a single/two-lane road
- ip26 8y agoEdit: redundant
- cududa 8y agoThat’s discussed in the article
- kenneth 8y agoThe fact that we drive on the right is the precise reason why trucks have less of a blind spot on the left. (We place the driver's seat closest to the center of the road, while on a mine site it's better to be close to the edge of the road.) If we drove on the left and built cars accordingly, then you'd see mine site tricks driving on the right. Left and right are not inherently different in any way (except I guess for people being right-handed more than left-handed, though has little effect.) Fun story: I was surprised recently by visiting one country that did things a bit differently: Burma. They drive on the right and have for 50 or so years… but they use mostly left-hand drive cars. So you'll see the driver's seat close to the curb. Took me quite a few taxi rides to figure out what that uncanny feeling was. (Also, they're one of the few countries with a timezone offset by a half hour increment)
- moltar 8y agoBurma is a fascinating story. They switched, like Sweden, but without planning. The reason? A fortune teller said the country would be prosperous. And now people exit the bus into the traffic instead of the sidewalk. Because nobody has the money to replace the buses or cars.
- ArekDymalski 8y agoThat is fascinanting. Can you provide a source for this story about a fortune teller?
- dmos62 8y agoThey could switch sides of the road, instead of replacing the vehicles. Moving and rotating all the signs is probably cheaper and easier.
- anoncake 8y agoReplacing the vehicles is effectively free, if you do it slowly as you replace vehicles anyway.
- anoncake 8y ago
- m-i-l 8y agoAs the parent comment suggests, most people are right eye dominant so from a safety perspective keeping the dominant eye closer to the oncoming traffic is preferable. And even before cars, most right handed people mount horses from their right side, especially if they've a big sword on their left, and it is safer to mount from the side rather than the middle of the road. The story I learned when I was younger was that most of continental Europe, and the (at the time) pro-French US, shifted to the right because Napoleon was left handed, although it isn't quite that simple - see "Why do some countries drive on the left and others on the right?"[0]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9869812 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9869812 .