On Wednesday, 9 July 2014 at 15:34:03 UTC, Alix Pexton wrote:
On 09/07/2014 12:36 PM, Chris wrote:
On Tuesday, 8 July 2014 at 21:01:46 UTC, Iain Buclaw via
Digitalmars-d
And everyone should drive on the left.
Driving on the left goes back to the times when coaches
(carriages) were
still in use. This was to avoid that drivers would
accidentally hit each
other with their whips when a coach would come from the
opposite
direction. No joke. As regards cars, driving on the left is
highly
unintuitive for most people as the majority of drivers are
right-handed.
There is no ergonomic or technical reason why cars should
drive on the
left. In most parts of the world driving on the right was
adopted from
early on as it is more intuitive (for most people).
Driving on the left actually originates from jousting. On a
tilting yard each combatant rides on the right side and aims
their lance across their body at the opponent in the lane on
the left. When knights passed each other out on the roads, the
would do so on the left side so show that they were not
hostile. The whole of Europe took up this practice, and used to
always ride, drive carts and march as a body of men on the left.
Then a chap called Napoleon came along and used a guerilla
tactic to trick his enemy by marching on the right so that his
troops looked like they were travelling in the opposite
direction. Eventually driving on the wrong side became the norm
for all the regions of Europe that Napoleon conquered, and it
spread as a matter of practicality to adjacent regions over
time. Napoleon was defeated by the English because this trick
does not work at sea. The UK still drives on the correct side
because there is no problem with having to swap sides when
crossing land borders. It is also an act that commemorates that
historic victory.
Or at least that is what I learned in school ^^
A...
This sounds just like Imperial education. Very interesting how it
equates Imperial practices with the "right" thing and the
(continental) arch enemy with the "wrong" thing. By the way,
there was a reason why combatant riders would ride on the right
side on a tilting yard: they were right-handed. Just as it makes
more sense to switch gears with the right hand and not with the
(in most cases) weaker left hand.
