3 ms·

"Driver" and "passenger" side for cars. Oh wait, doesn't work in England etc. I guess for ships there is no variation between countries? Starboard is presumabl

"Driver" and "passenger" side for cars. Oh wait, doesn't work in England etc. I guess for ships there is no variation between countries? Starboard is presumably where the wheel was so everyone must have left it on the right side?

Broken_Hippo 4y ago
I've always assumed that "driver" and "passenger" were simply reversed for England, etc. I'd reverse it for postal trucks, after all, or cars imported from England and such.
- chimprich 4y ago
  In the UK the (possibly?) more common terms are nearside (kerb side) and offside (road side). It's maybe better than "driver" and "passenger side" because it still makes sense when you're driving a car with different "handedness" to your current road network.
- zwieback 4y ago
  Right, that was my point. The article says that port/starboard is used because left/right is confusing depending on the direction. But unlike ships cars have the driver side right or left so it's not that useful.
Someone 4y ago
> Starboard is presumably where the wheel was Not the wheel, but (as this article also says) the steering oar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steering_oar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steering_oar: “The steering oar or steering board is an over-sized oar or board, to control the direction of a ship or other watercraft prior to the invention of the rudder.“
gamblor956 4y ago
It still works just as well in England... Things that are driver-side in the U.S. are also driver-side in England, because the layout is designed around the position of the driver. "Starboard" comes from Old English "steor bord", which meant "steering side of the boat" back in the days when a steering oar was used to steer the boat. Most sailors were right-handed so this was almost always the right side. It was easier to dock with the other side of the boat facing the port, so the left side became "larboard" and then simply "port." English is the international nautical language owing to its centuries of dominance of the oceans, followed by the U.S. dominance of global politics, so the English terms became the standard nautical terms. (Note: technically the international nautical language is "Seaspeak," which is a special dialect of English created specifically for nautical use.)
jiayo 4y ago
Having grown up in a large transit-oriented city, I learned to drive as a grownup. I really struggled with the concept of reversing. "Turn the wheel left!" "You just turn the wheel the way you want the _back_ of the car to go." "No, the other left!" At this point I was still limited to driving in empty 1000 space parking lots and was getting frustrated. One day I realized, I could ask my driving companion-turned-instructor "hey when you say left and right, can you just say passenger-side or driver-side?" After a few iterations at this, it all clicked. My new-driver brain could do absolute positioning consistently with minimal effort, instead of having to calculate relative positioning each time and getting frazzled.

Broken_Hippo 4y ago

I've always assumed that "driver" and "passenger" were simply reversed for England, etc. I'd reverse it for postal trucks, after all, or cars imported from England and such.

chimprich 4y ago
In the UK the (possibly?) more common terms are nearside (kerb side) and offside (road side). It's maybe better than "driver" and "passenger side" because it still makes sense when you're driving a car with different "handedness" to your current road network.
zwieback 4y ago
Right, that was my point. The article says that port/starboard is used because left/right is confusing depending on the direction. But unlike ships cars have the driver side right or left so it's not that useful.

Someone 4y ago

> Starboard is presumably where the wheel was Not the wheel, but (as this article also says) the steering oar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steering_oar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steering_oar: “The steering oar or steering board is an over-sized oar or board, to control the direction of a ship or other watercraft prior to the invention of the rudder.“

gamblor956 4y ago

It still works just as well in England... Things that are driver-side in the U.S. are also driver-side in England, because the layout is designed around the position of the driver. "Starboard" comes from Old English "steor bord", which meant "steering side of the boat" back in the days when a steering oar was used to steer the boat. Most sailors were right-handed so this was almost always the right side. It was easier to dock with the other side of the boat facing the port, so the left side became "larboard" and then simply "port." English is the international nautical language owing to its centuries of dominance of the oceans, followed by the U.S. dominance of global politics, so the English terms became the standard nautical terms. (Note: technically the international nautical language is "Seaspeak," which is a special dialect of English created specifically for nautical use.)

jiayo 4y ago

Having grown up in a large transit-oriented city, I learned to drive as a grownup. I really struggled with the concept of reversing. "Turn the wheel left!" "You just turn the wheel the way you want the _back_ of the car to go." "No, the other left!" At this point I was still limited to driving in empty 1000 space parking lots and was getting frustrated. One day I realized, I could ask my driving companion-turned-instructor "hey when you say left and right, can you just say passenger-side or driver-side?" After a few iterations at this, it all clicked. My new-driver brain could do absolute positioning consistently with minimal effort, instead of having to calculate relative positioning each time and getting frazzled.