Why is it that in America people drive on the right side & in Europe it's the opposite?

Question

Who started this trend & why?

Answer 1

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Ken E
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The United Kingdom, Eire, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and many of the Pacific Islands drive on the left. In virtually all other countries driving is on the right. Up to the late 18th century there were local rules in each European (and American) town. On the highways most traffic kept to the left when passing as that permitted a horseman to hold a weapon in his right hand. I kid you not.

By the start of the 19th century Bonaparte had conquered, temporarily, most of western Europe. For some reason the French had decided on a "drive on the right" rule, possibly because that was the rule in Paris or other of their major cities. In most of the countries under the French empire, the "Code Napoleon" was imposed and that would have included a drive on the right rule.

Some of the places that Bonaparte did not get to were Sweden and the United Kingdom and they kept driving on the left.

When the car was invented in the 1880s in Germany people tended to drive on the right. Late in the 19th century, even before there were cars the French spent a lot of money fixing up their roads. This meant there were fairly good roads in France and in the 1890s they took over as the biggest car-making nation. Their cars were the most technically advanced and were usually set up for driving on the right.

When US car makers started up about 1904, the French cars were generally the best on the roads and the new American manufacturers copied them to some extent, Henry Ford certainly did. At the time some US cities had "drive on the left" rules. But since most of the new cars were for driving on the right, the Americans all switched over to the right by about 1912.

Until just after the Second World War, traffic in China kept to the left. The dictator of most of the country was Generalissimo Chiang-Kai-Shek who also held the Chevrolet monopoly for China. To make more money for himself, he changed the road rules to drive on the right so he could sell more cars fully imported from the USA. Didn't do him much good, the Communists took over soon after that.

In the late 1960s Sweden changed over to driving on the right.

You will notice that most countries driving on the left are islands.

There is no or little benefit to driving on either side, death rates in car accidents in Japan, Australia and the USA are about the same.

Answer 2

It's not the opposite in most of europe though it is in britain. I don't know who started the trend.

Answer 3

because we want too....its not a trend! Americans do what we want, sometimes even drive on the left.

Answer 4

no longer basically Europeans its something of the international, they additionally use the Metric equipment, the entire international does, US should be diverse and "particular" to piss off foreigners that come