UK Driving -- a first look...

I keep getting into the car on the wrong side. :-p

I was pleased that the foot controls are just like ours; left to right are clutch, brake, gas.

Backing up is weird, because I have to twist to the left instead of the right. You'd be surprised how odd that is.

The shifter is on the left, because the steering is on the right side of the car, and that takes a little getting used to. My first drive was in London, and I was adjusting to the side of the street, a new vehicle, traffic patterns of the city, shifting with the left hand, and trying to find the street signs. It was interesting.

I've been making my turns with "lefty-tighty, righty-loosy" as a mantra, because it's the opposite back home.  You turn to the near lane when turning left, and the far lane when turning right.

I'm still getting the hang of roundabouts, which lane to enter from, when to move out from center. They're really easy compared to some of the funky n-way intersections we would have otherwise.

You won't believe how narrow some of the roads are, and some of them have 50mph speed limits. Imagine closing on someone at 100mph with barely enough room to NOT knock each other's mirrors off.

One of my struggles has been to keep the right-side tires off of the curbs. It's just very very narrow, and you need to know your car's dimensions quite well to get around. In the US we have so much space that we take all of that for granted. We have wider parking spaces than they have driving lanes (and their parking spaces!!! Whew!).

Highway driving is easier because lanes are wide and people are traveling in the same direction. It is a little disconcerting, though, because there are no speed limit signs. I looked it up, and found that 70 is correct unless posted otherwise (whew).

UK drivers don't stay in the center of a three-lane group. They drive in the leftmost unless passing. Some pass so much they're always in the rightmost.

We're in a Vauxhall Insignia, which is a lovely car. We've only driven it in "econo" mode because diesel is expensive here, and we want the fuel to last. Even so, it's got reasonable pickup -- more on tap than we need since we're avoiding tickets as best we can.

A Photo from the PASSENGER side.

It has luxury everything. It has rain sensors so it can turn the windshield wipers on/off/up/down as needed. It has light sensors so it can work the headlights for you. It has sat-nav. It's quite the little beastie.

But we've survived and not hit anything at all. And the car is awesome.