Scotland - Challenge of the Left, Flinched from the Right

 June 23, 2024

The summer solstice but one day since, the sky is light long before we are out of bed early. We have slept with our Stafford Street lodging window open for needed ventilation in our garden level/half-basement room in Edinburgh's West End District. Though tired, I hear conversations of passing pedestrians and the few boisterous celebrants down the way through our open window. I sleep, but not so soundly.

As agreed, Clan Suneson members will leave each of their respective lodgings and take the tram to Edinburgh Airport for an 08:00 pick up of our rental SUV. 

So, the adventure begins.

Our 5 passenger SUV and means of exploring the nicks & crannies of Scotland

Fifty years of driving muscle memory out the window. Driving on the left side of the road is not impossible for an American. I am confident it can be done. Certainly all of our lives are depending upon me to get it right - even if it is on the left.

Once behind the wheel, several challenges present themselves immediately:

Left Side is the Right side:

Dad! You're drifting!

The cry comes from my passengers. My tires rumble over the center-lane reflectors or worse, the tiny strip at the edge of the pavement that passes for a shoulder isn't really a road shoulder as I have known them in the USA. To this day I will claim that British roadways do not have shoulders. Curbs, yes. Shoulders, no.

Dad! You're drifting again! Sheeesh!

I was expecting to travel on the left side of the roadway. Still, it was unnatural to have traffic coming at me on my right. I instinctively flinched, wanting to a have safe distance from the on-rushing lorries and cars. I drift. I strive to keep in the center of the lane. My passengers let me know how often I fail at this effort. After days of left side driving, at times I still flinched when rounding a corner and I see a head-on grill flying toward my right side. Yikes and blimey. 

On the rare occasion that I did have a stop sign or signal, I forced myself to think; which lane do I take? I found myself overthinking at times. Driving against the ingrained grain of traffic flow I've always known, I would at times overthink. 

"Dad! The other lane!" Comes the cry from the back seat.

Just so you know, we all survived and having driven two cars for eight days in the UK. Both were returned undamaged. My ego, not so much.

Roundabouts: My take on the numerous traffic circles (used instead of traditional orthogonal intersection) is that they are preferable for traffic flow if all the traffic flows and knows where it is going. I did not have my usual state-side comfort in knowing my routes and directions. 

Finding myself out of my comfort zone in traffic's rushing flow, I realized that turning decisions had to be made while traveling at 35 mph. Which exit-spoke out of this circling maelstrom is the one I need to take? I am turning the wheel right while anticipating turning left in a matter of 6 to 10 yards. Grant was a superior navigator as he read the map on his phone - still I missed a few of my turns. Sometimes we rode around more than 360 degrees, sometimes we were off in the wrong direction. Grant then recalculated my trajectory and soon we were back on track. 

Forced to drive in circles, the exit maneuvers were not always well executed by me. I hit a few curbs and shoulders and Inga was quick to express her exasperation with my lack of vehicular control. This from the little girl who once joyously claimed from her car seat, "Daddy, I like to go fast!" 

I snapped at her critique. "Sit back and enjoy the journey, it's not as easy as it seems."

Signage: As if thinking, overthinking and navigating circular routes was not enough of a challenge; there were the signs. Signs in English of course. But what do those English phrases really mean to a driver?

How is one to react when facing an 'Adverse Camber' ahead?

Several times while traveling at a descent rate of speed, I am confronted with a large sign:

WARNING:

ONCOMING TRAFFIC

IN CENTER OF ROAD

Unnerving. 

Why would oncoming traffic be in the center of the road? I'm doing my darndest to stay in my own (unnatural) lane; why would oncoming traffic take their half out of the center? It doesn't seem fair after all the roundabouts I've been through.

Answer: There is a bridge ahead, and they don't have their own half of the road because there is but one single lane that spans this bridge. It is a recipe for a head-on collision it seems to me. Even though this country has been around for a couple of thousand years, improvements (such as safety) are slow to come. I crossed many a bridge that were so signed because they were barely wide enough for a single car, even though it was a 2-lane road approaching the bridge.

Road Construction: We visited the birthplace of John Muir in Dunbar, Scotland; we had an extended conversation with a woman who welcomed us to the museum. She sighed, "I'd love to see Yosemite and some of the America that John Muir experienced."

"You should," I quickly replied, "You won't regret it."

"Aye, but you drive on the wrong side of the road, you know."

I said nothing after that, but I thought; Maybe so, but at least our roads are built for cars. British roads obviously pre-date motor vehicles, and little effort has been made in over a century of motorized travel by the British to give thought, plan, build and use modern, safe thoroughfares. And it shows. I guess it's all a matter of what one gets used to and can tolerate. As those who built the first roads in Britain might advise; Caveat motoristium! Let the driver beware!

As mentioned, shoulders on most roads do not exist. The pavement on which my tyres ran, so often ended abruptly with no room for error. And, unaccustomed as I was to traveling on the left, I instinctively gravitated away from traffic hurling at me on my right. I could have used a bigger margin for error at times, namely, a shoulder.

Scottish country roads or the equivalent of our American county road or here in Texas the humble FM (Farm to Market Road) had not only no shoulder, but landowners were allowed to build stone walls that came to the very edge of the road. And if no stone wall, trees and brush were ever encroaching the vehicular lane, making it difficult to see oncoming traffic rounding a corner heavily obscured by the vegetation. A swath should have been mowed and/or cut to widen the driver's vision on such closed-in carriage ways.

Even their main highways, for example, the A1, has speed limits posted at 70 mph. Wee! -- Until in the middle of the highway, doing 70 mph, one encounters yet another roundabout. Slow down, look right for crossing vehicles, sweep around the circle and then get back to highway speed. Until the next roundabout is stuck smack dab in the middle of a roaring good highway. They prefer a roundabout rather than a good and decent overpass such as we use over here. 

The A1 and other 'high speed' roads had annoying propensity to lure me into thinking there were dual lanes in each direction separated by a broad median - until they weren't. Two lanes (again, 70 mph) would be constricted to a single lane, then the median would vanish. At 70 mph I'd like to rely on consistency for the whole length of the journey. It does not happen that way. 

'Single Carriageway' was often encountered in the rural parts of Scotland. There were frequent 'lay byes', wide spots to allow two cars to slowly pass on by one another while one pulled over and stopped. I found these one lane roads were almost always picturesque and the slow travel and the occasional sheep in the roadway made for a more peaceful motoring than the higher trafficked, nominally 2-lane roads.

The locals I assumed get by fine, using lay byes and being well aware of oncoming traffic in center lane and such. I regret posting criticisms as a guest in a beautiful land, but my perspective suggests there is room for improvement. Maybe not the tax dollars available for suggested safety upgrades me thinks. 

A better attitude might be: Enjoy the Journey - even if the road you travel is not what one is accustomed to.