I did have some confusion on a toll road…didn’t see any pay points, had no transponder, did not know if I was even allowed there. Eay, Canada sent me a bill from my license plate number.
I went to Vancouver and Victoria with my family and we didn’t really see any toll roads. Only border checkpoints. My father drove through the border checkpoints. We had no issues there.
I also drove out of a ferry from Victoria to Vancouver for the first time. The hardest part was merging, but I was able to get it!
Agreed. In Vancouver and Victoria, the roads were very well maintained. In my state of Washington, the roads have several potholes on the road. I was worried if the underside of my car was damaged after hitting one of those.
I really wanted to drive in India. I don’t think all cities in India has a rental car (drive yourself) service, but they have car-hire services (with a driver provided). However, my aunt and uncle in India have cars there.
My family was once again against me driving in India, because if you crash into somebody, you will be treated like a jackass there and maybe dead meat by the public. And not to mention, traffic is a nightmare.
My family and I stick to taxi services when we go to India.
The History Channel featured a series Called “Ice Road Truckers” (IRT) in 2010-2012, where America Long Haul Truckers in Season One hauled cargo in India through India’s Himalayan highways. In season Two, they took on the Andes Mountains in South America; and in Season Three, they took jobs in Canada hauling Log Trains over iced over lakes and Alaska hauling heavy equipment to the Oil fields and remote villages. I saw the episodes on DABL, an independent channel that features Re-runs…
Full Episodes…
Some short teasers…
I do not think I ever saw this last one as the drivers are not American…
I’ve worked with many many engineers from India over the years. There are roads/highways in India they all refuse to drive on because it’s so dangerous.
I watched three seasons on DABL, (the Himalayas in India, the Andes in South America, and the Ice Roads in Canada and Alaska…)
I guess there were other seasons that were only the History Channel. But I only remember 4 or so main drivers (I know two were American, I don’t know about the others…)
I remember the first episode in India, the driver was involved in two accidents before he even got out of town and he just quit there on the spot and got out of country…
Alex Debogorski – Canadian
Lisa Kelly – American
Hugh Rowland – Canadian
Thom Beers – American
Darrell Ward – American
Art Burke – Canadian
Rick Yemm – Canadian
US, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Argentina, Japan, Okinawa, Guam.
Most of these were work trips, but I lived in Guatemala for five years with a motorcycle as my primary form of transportation. That was not prudent on my part.
Latin American drivers may subscribe to “whichever vehicle is heaviest has the right-of-way” (Quien pesa mas), but they are much less likely to panic when something unexpected happens.
Japanese and Okinawan (whether those are two different countries depends upon who you ask) drivers are very polite and careful, which is important to me because it takes me at least two weeks to get used to driving on the left side of the road. During that two week period, I am a hazard to everyone. I read a little Japanese but Google Maps is my friend.
Dave Barry once observed of Italian drivers that every car on every road in Italy, including those in funeral processions, is simultaneously trying to pass.
In 1969 I drove in Japan, both Okinawa from Camp Hansen and the main island from Mt Fuji. The expressway was logically marked for English speakers while the people were very helpful in cities. But when turning on city streets it was difficult to not go into the right lane. I guess I was lucky to have avoided an accident or a ticket for one of many violations like driving the wrong way on a one way ;alley; for 3 blocks in Tokyo.
Yep NZ was “fun.” Luckily we only rented/drove on the South Island, much less crowded, perfect place to learn how to drive on the “wrong” side. Making left hand turns I kept ending up in the lane for oncoming traffic. And I kept wiping the windshield instead of signalling turns.
Most interesting were the single lane bridges where one side had right of way over the other, but if clear you could proceed and other side had to then yield to you once you were on the bridge.
Once drove onto one of these that was under repair, with many boards up to protect cars, and I SUDDENLY NOTICED I WAS ALSO DRIVING ALONG A SET OF RAILROAD TRACKS, that shared the bridge with vehicles. No train present thank goodness!
Narrow lanes on winding mountain (Southern Alps) roads, with folks pulling boat trailers…it was a beautiful place to die if it was going to happen anywhere. Glad we had a small compact Toyota rental, and not a big US vehicle.
I forgot this when I was posting, I observed a funeral while I was stationed in Italy and here in America, we respect a Funeral Procession and pull over and let it proceed without interruption…
However, they did not do that in Italy and drivers ziped in and out, and do not seem to care about the sanctity of the occasion. I also noticed that even those derivers in the Funeral Procession, ever with the funeral flags on the cars with their headlights turned on, were passing each other to get to the front…
I asked one of my Italian employees about this and he only laughed and said that they just wanted to be the first to the Grave Yard as the the ones closest to the funeral hearse were deemed the most “favored by the deceased…”
I’ve driven and walked in Boston and I have to say they actually try to run you over. Much like in some of the Eastern European locations. Must be heritage or culture or the boss Hogg influence.
lol … I had that same problem. I also was confused by the manual transmission’s gear pattern, wasn’t the mirror image of left hand drive cars as might be expected, so I’d put car in 5th gear when I wanted to start off in 1st. Manual transmissions seemed to be the norm in NZ for rental cars at the time. What a great country! … lol …
Yeah a right hand is pretty much the same as a left hand, just some of the controls are reversed for driver convenience. The shift pattern would not change though because they would have to build separate transmissions causing much confusion and little benefit. I was relieved though to find the clutch and brake pedals in the same configuration. That would have been a steep learning curve.
When we used maps, before gos and navigation systems, I was driving through nyc. Wife had the map and I needed her to check to see if I was going the right direction or not. She can’t read maps and finally just handed it to me expecting I could drive through the city and read the map at the same time. Must have been going the right direction since I made it out and home. I like navigation systems now.
I also have a wife without the “map-gene,” Before GPS, if we needed to use maps, and the wife was “assisting” it was a simple matter if we were traveling in a northerly direction (meaning we were traveling from the bottom of the map towards the top. Then east was on the right side of the map and west on the left and she could handle that, but if we were traveling south, forget it… I tried to get her to hold the map upside down so the routes were oriented right of left, but that only got the maps dropped in my lap…
When I retired from the Air Force in 2000, we RV’d all over the country and before the day’s travel, I plotted the trip with MapQuest on the Laptop and printed out the trip. The advantage here was the route was always started from the bottom of the map page and they only covered 50-miles on a page. You just dromve up the map and it did not matter if you were traveling North, East, South, or West… You were never confused if the turn to the west was Left or Right…
Now we Garmin, I have one in each or the vehicles. The new Honda and Toyota uses the smart phone for GPS, but being the cheap f@rt I am, I use a Tracfone and each minute costs (I buy my phones from QVC or HSN and I get a new phone each year with a Year’s worth of service for less than $70… Beat that… As you might guess, we are not big phone users…
