The Wrong Side of the Road

When we made the decision to leave the UK and move to the US in 2010, we were really excited to be finally fulfilling our long time goal to work and live in America. Our first concerns were mostly with getting the move approved by my husband’s employers, then getting our visas sorted. Our daughter was initially worried about taking the leap but eventually, and with little persuasion needed on our part, decided that this was something she really wanted to do.

Looking back, I laugh at the things that I was concerned with. I wasn’t at all worried about leaving friends and family, moving several thousand miles from everything that I had ever known or finding my way in a new country. Packing up the house and selling it was stressful, but we’d done that several times before and was more of a pain than a problem.

No, my biggest fear, the one that kept me awake at night, was learning to drive an automatic car and, heaven help me, driving on the wrong side of the road. I scoured the internet for advice, for others that shared my concern, for driving schools that would take me out for some lessons but although I found others that had had similar fears, the comments that were given in response were less than helpful being more of a condemnation of American drivers than reassurance that I wouldn’t die the minute I got behind the wheel. My imagination ran wild with visions and dreams of me forgetting which side of the road I should be on, hurtling headlong into the path of a lorry (which I soon learned was no longer a lorry but a truck). A friend in the UK offered to let me drive her automatic so that I could see how easy it was but I was convinced that it would be a suicide run.

On arrival in Columbus, I was happy for my husband Stephen to take our only car to work. Lizzy and I walked everywhere, even through the summer heat and humidity, as we went shopping and to the cinema. We were used to walking in our home town Bristol but this was a whole different ball game. Not only was there the weather to contend with as the temperature climbed into the 90’s (Fahrenheit of course, not Centigrade), but it was a very stormy summer with severe storm warnings and tornadoes hitting the area on a regular basis. With the imminent arrival of a second car and after a particularly exhausting walk to the cinema which resulted in me having to get Stephen to fetch us to take us home, he insisted that I finally get over myself and learn to drive the car. 

Knees knocking and with the feeling that I did not have long to live and would die in a tangled mess of a car, I finally sat behind the wheel and we set off. I started off badly by trying to pull the seatbelt over my right shoulder. Then there was no hand brake and where was I supposed to rest my left foot? We crawled along the road at a frightening 10 miles an hour. I cautiously eased past a car that was parked on the right hand side of the road, not sure whether I was leaving enough gap. There didn’t seem to be an awful lot else for me to do but grip the wheel so that my finger nails left little half crescent marks in my palms and try to stop my teeth grinding as my mouth was clenched tight shut. I remember very little else of the journey other than someone hitting their horn when I stopped at a four way stop and had no idea how to work out whose turn it was to move forward. The guy behind me was not happy but there were too many directions to look in. We made it home in one piece though, and although it took me a few more trips to be comfortable, I was soon able to face the highway and travelling further afield on my own.

Here we are almost three years later and I love driving an automatic car. When we do return to the UK and I have to drive a manual, I find driving a lot more tiring and for the first day or so keep stalling the car. I still do silly things like getting into the passenger seat instead of the driver’s seat, trying to pull the seatbelt over the wrong shoulder and I have lost count of the number of times I try to put on the handbrake on the left hand side. I have never driven on the wrong side of the road and even manage to navigate the increasing number of roundabouts that are appearing around Columbus (referred to by my GPS as a ‘traffic circle’).

Now I am helping my fifteen year old daughter learn to drive. Now that’s a whole ‘nother story.