Why Left Hand Drive?

I wen out last night and tried driving on the other side...Its dangerous.. People honked, flashed their lights, swore....

Yeah, I'd read something about the horse wagons before that made the switch to left hand drive more practical.

Frankly, I don't care, it is those people who take their half out of the center who are annoying. ;-)

:-)

Kerry Packer must have been an American!!!!

....cause he took cricket and turned it into Night-Cricket with the slogan "Big Boys Play At Night".

Cricket has never been the same since then. Night time Games, Coloured clothing and Limited overs caught the peoples fancy......

.......Now its come down to Twenty-Twenty Cricket.

Can you imagine how the Brits lived before that ?? Or for that matter the Scots! Haggis running wild in the highlands etc etc

i have no idea why, but im thankful that its left-hand. i dont have to adjust anymore.

silent "G"

lol lol yes well they di do something after all!!

It was a line from "Monty Python's Life of Bryan"

...

The Romans;

Built roads,

Built Aqua Ducts

Built schools

Built Baths

Built sewage systems...

Considering that they never came futher than Hadrians Wall I can only speak for us Scots - they didn't get into out country lol. What have they done for the English exept left them a lot of ruins lol lol I don't know.

Yes! But what have the Romans really done for us :)

Seemingly Several hundred years ago, everybody used the English system. In the Middle Ages you kept to the left for the simple reason that you never knew who you'd meet on the road in those days; you wanted to make sure that a stranger passed on the right so you could go for your sword in case he proved unfriendly. (Very good Reason unfortunately we are not using swords any more or I would have cut a few donw by now lol lol.

Also the Romans used the left hand side of the road.

ok *hands up*, I'm outta here.

cheers

Except for the Brits, the rest of Europe drive on the right side of the Road. And because we are Right we are having the Steering wheel on the Left side. And why would WE do the Wrong thing and Follow the Brits ?

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How can you take a game where the ball is carried or thrown and call it "Football" :)

Mr Paul, i referred to Karl Benz because he is generally "acknowledged as the inventor of the modern automobile"

screwed it up !!!

And qtips, he invented the first combustion engined car, not the "first" car.

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robertsky09

ok

The Americans just wanted to be different, so they put the steering wheel on the other side.. They're good at that.. They took a game called rounders and modified it to Base Ball.. Took Hockey, put it on ice and made ice-hockey. Took Rugby, modified it and made American Football. Need I go on ? :)

Yes There were Roads Carts powered by cows :)

The first legal reference in Britain to an order for traffic to remain on the left occurred in 1756 with regard to London Bridge. The Highway Act 1773 contained a recommendation that horse traffic should remain on the left and this is enshrined in section 78 of the Highway Act 1835.

In the late 1700s, a shift from left to right took place in countries such as the United States, when teamsters started using large freight wagons pulled by several pairs of horses. The wagons had no driver’s seat, so the driver sat on the left rear horse and held his whip in his right hand. Seated on the left, the driver naturally preferred that other wagons pass him on the left so that he could be sure to keep clear of the wheels of oncoming wagons. He did that by driving on the right side of the road.

The British, however, kept to the left. They had smaller wagons, and the driver sat on the wagon, usually on the right side of the front seat. From there he could use his long whip in his right hand without entangling it in the cargo behind him. In that position, on the right side of the wagon, the driver could judge the safety margin of overtaking traffic by keeping to the left side of the road. Countries that became part of the British Empire adopted the keep-left rule too, although there were some exceptions. Canada, for example, where the maritime provinces and Vancouver (later to become British Columbia) drove on the left, eventually changed to the right in order to make border crossings to and from the United States easier. Nova Scotia switched to driving on the right on April 15, 1923. During World War II, American truck makers Ford, Chevrolet and Chrysler built 'Canadian Military Pattern' [CMP] trucks for use throughout the British Empire and most were right hand drive to use in left hand traffic countries.

hth

then it would be india lolzzz

the Automobile was invented?

[quote]Although several other German engineers (including Gottlieb Daimler, Wilhelm Maybach, and Siegfried Marcus) were working on the problem at about the same time, Karl Benz is generally acknowledged as the inventor of the modern automobile.[5] In 1879 Benz was granted a patent for his first engine, designed in 1878. Many of his other inventions made the use of the internal combustion engine feasible for powering a vehicle and in 1896, Benz designed and patented the first internal combustion flat engine.[unquote]

*thumbs up*

now back to the Q. why LHD?

it was a engineers error while assembling the car..so now we are stuck with it :)

(Wiki.)

Although Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot is often credited with building the first self-propelled mechanical vehicle or automobile in about 1769, this claim is disputed by some, who doubt Cugnot's three-wheeler ever ran. Others claim Ferdinand Verbiest, a member of a Jesuit mission in China, built the first steam-powered 'car' around 1672[3][4]. What is not in doubt is that Richard Trevithick built and demonstrated his Puffing Devil road locomotive in 1801, the first truly successful steam-powered road vehicle.

François Isaac de Rivaz, a Swiss inventor, designed the first internal combustion engine, in 1806, which was fuelled by a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen and used it to develop the world's first vehicle to run on such an engine. The design was not very successful, as was the case with Samuel Brown, Samuel Morey, and Etienne Lenoir who each produced vehicles powered by clumsy internal combustion engines.[5]

In November 1881 French inventor Gustave Trouvé demonstrated a working three-wheeled automobile. This was at the International Exhibition of Electricity in Paris.[6]

An automobile powered by an Otto gasoline engine was built in Mannheim, Germany by Karl Benz in 1885 and granted a patent in January of the following year under the auspices of his major company, Benz & Cie. which was founded in 1883.

Although several other German engineers (including Gottlieb Daimler, Wilhelm Maybach, and Siegfried Marcus) were working on the problem at about the same time, Karl Benz is generally acknowledged as the inventor of the modern automobile.[5] In 1879 Benz was granted a patent for his first engine, designed in 1878. Many of his other inventions made the use of the internal combustion engine feasible for powering a vehicle and in 1896, Benz designed and patented the first internal combustion flat engine.

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first automobile was invented in Germany, by Karl Benz.

fwiw

to get away from the colonial feeling as Brits, these ex-Brits says lets do the opposite and prove the Brits wrong.

heheheheheh like the lyrics to a song..."if loving you is wrong.......I dun wanna be rite"

BORN TO BOWL...........FORCED TO WORK

us Brits, just to be arkward............

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well, since the Germans pretty much invented the automobile, maybe you should ask them--- they have the steering wheel on the left

they follow the camel go

I DO WHAT I LIKE, I LIKE WHAT I DO