A. You are right to be concerned, but not to the point of fear. Driving is a habit, and we do most things like steering, braking or changing gear automatically – your autopilot is in control. This is usually a good thing as it liberates the mind for dealing with the serious stuff, for example a kid running into the road. However, the number one cause of wrong-side mistakes is being in a totally familiar situation where your autopilot assumes control when it shouldn’t. An example is coming to the end of a one-way street and wanting to turn right – it looks just the same as at home, so your autopilot kicks in. Except in the U.K. or Ireland you are now on the wrong side of the road!

Psychologists tell us the best way to break a habit is: 1. Be aware of the trigger, for example, the one-way street; 2. Develop a new habit that kicks in when there is a trigger. The book describes common triggers, and gives an effective method for developing new safe habits.

A. You have to realize that the road systems have evolved over two thousand years! (Compare that to home.) The Romans built a few straight roads, but there are also thousands of little roads that used to be tracks for ox-carts so that produce could be brought to the local market. Tiny fields had (and still have) high hedges or dry-stone walls to prevent cattle wandering, and lanes had to skirt these fields. So the lanes also often had (and have) high hedges or walls. The only difference between now and five hundred years ago is that they have been paved, signed and just possibly, widened a little.

Of course, there are plenty of more modern roads between areas of high population density. However, many historic, natural and scenic attractions (mountains, islands, lakes, small gorgeous villages) are in areas of sparse population, and if you want to see these sights, you have to learn how to drive quickly but safely on rural roads. If you don’t, you’ll take forever to go from A to B, and more importantly, you’ll create a long line of utter frustration behind you, leading to dangerous passing.

In On the Wrong Side! I teach you the tricks to driving fast but safely – it’s all to do with road positioning and dealing with the force of habit – that autopilot again.

A. The question really should be why do others drive on the right, and the answer is the French Emperor Napoleon. You can find Roman roads in England, and we know from the grooves in them that traffic travelled on the left, as indeed it did throughout the Roman Empire, and hence Europe. Napoleon started marching his armies on the right, so everywhere he conquered, traffic switched to the right. Other countries such as the U.S.A. followed suit, but Napoleon was never able to invade and conquer England, so on the left they remained. Incidentally, according to Wikipedia, seventy-six countries drive on the left.

A. The clutch, brake and gas pedals are the same way round. If they weren’t, it would make things much more complicated. However, you’ll need to use your left hand for the gear stick and handbrake. (I’m assuming a manual transmission car.) The positions of other controls, as usual, are at the vehicle manufacturer’s discretion.

A. No they don’t. There’s a trick involving the parking brake (it’s called the handbrake there) for starting off without rolling back. I describe it in detail in my book for both manual and automatic transmission cars, and also how to practice it before you leave home. When I learnt to drive in the U.K., my instructor would put a matchbox under a wheel on a really steep hill, and I would have to start off without crushing it. I tell you how to practice this trick at home so you won't be caught out.

A. This is way too big a question to deal with here, and I devote a whole chapter to it in my book, with lots of diagrams to help you. Very briefly, they are much safer than regular intersections because you have relatively slow traffic coming at you from one direction only. On average, they also speed traffic flow, resulting in less congestion and less pollution. They are a contributor to the driving death rate in the U.K. being about one third that of the U.S. (World Health Organization).

As for coping with them, there are strict rules for entering, circulating and then leaving. These rules, which I explain in detail, apply to all roundabouts (there are several different types), and you MUST know them if you are to be safe and stress-free. At its simplest, you are dealing with a Yield at a circular one-way street that you always leave to the left.

A. The “heavy” bit is something that confronts any writer of a technical book, and the standard method of dealing with it is humor that illustrates points. I am no different, and I have included a pretty clueless family to lighten things, as well as stories and bad puns. Here’s what someone said who read a draft: “I really enjoyed all the little jokes and stories throughout, as it helped to lighten the often heavy, technical (but necessary) information.” Provided you buy On the Wrong Side! a few weeks before you leave home and then read it leisurely, I think you’ll easily digest everything, and it will stand you in really good stead when you start driving ‘over there’. You’ll feel far more in control.

A. Only partly. Unlike in the U.S.A. and Canada, road signs in the U.K. conform to the United Nations international road sign convention, and are, for the most part, quite clear. This is because they rely on symbols as much as possible, reverting to the use of text only where symbolic representation is difficult or ambiguous. However, there are some tricky ones. For example, the first sign doesn’t mean ‘stunt bikers ahead’, it means ‘no motorized vehicles’. And the second sign is not to alert you to a photo opportunity; it’s the warning for a speed camera. By the way, Give Way is used on signs in the United Kingdom (but not Ireland) instead of Yield, and the book lists dozens of driving terms that are different. For example, do you know what these mean: bonnet, boot, lay-by, géill slí, hump bridge, lorry, verge, etc.?

Irish road signs are a mixture of international and local road signs in a manner familiar to Canadians, and have, to date, been far less regulated than U.K. signs. I show many examples of both U.K. and Irish signs in the book, and also tell you where to find more. There are also several on the 'Driving' page of this website in case you missed them.

A. Whoever told you this didn’t understand the different way speed limits are applied over there. Speed limits outside towns and villages are assigned to the type of road, not according to geography. So, for example, the speed limit on undivided highways in the U.K. is 60 m.p.h. and on regional roads in Ireland it is 80 kilometers per hour. Let me quote from the U.K. Highway Code: Within that limit it is up to you to drive at a speed that is safe for the road conditions. "But I was within the speed limit, officer" won't protect you! I give full details in the book, and, of course, conversions between different units such as miles per hour and kilometers per hour, etc..

A. I thought long and hard about a digital version, but on balance decided it was not a good idea. When you have plenty of illustrations, changes in layout become difficult to handle, but there's a more important factor. An illustration or diagram may be referred to on several pages, and with an actual book it is easy to grab it from the glove compartment and to flip backwards and forwards by having a well-placed finger holding the page. With a digital book, this is far more difficult and rather frustrating.

Ideally, a good video would need views from drones to obtain an overview of the road, as well as staged incidents (with all other traffic held up) to illustrate points. (Dash-cams give pretty poor results.) A movie studio with a large budget could do it, but not me! In addition, it would be a very long video. There are one or two videos out there (see ref. 1 in 'Resources'), but I really think a good old-fashioned book is ideal for conveying this type of information.

A. Here is a sample. The book, is a well-bound paperback, and at a little under 6 x 9 inches in size, is ideal for carrying on a plane or placing in a glove compartment. It has 100 pages and is printed on high quality paper by a well-known printer. Most of its numerous illustrations are in color for clarity. I've done my best to keep the cost down and so have tended to avoid photographs. While they look pretty, they are costly and generally convey less information than a well-constructed diagram.