Driving In Oz:

This weekend was my first experience driving a right hand drive car on the wrong side of the road. Boy was it fun! I didn't kill anyone and even managed to avoid wrecking the car. Those people at Budget Rent-a-Car are so trusting!

I rented a small Hundie (I can't even spell it!), a small Korean disposable car. It took me a day to get the hang of things. The car was a standard, and sometimes when I would go to shift gears I would instead roll down the window. The turn signals and wiper control stalks are reversed, so one slow pass with the wiper blades means I want to turn right, and a faster wiper blade meant I want to turn left. The clutch, brake, and gas pedal are the same as in the US.

The problem is remembering to think through every intersection before and during. You also have to remember to remember. For example, if you know you want to turn left up ahead you have to think it through so that you don't accidentally react automatically. The worst is pulling out of a parking lot. You naturally tend to pull out on the right side of a driveway, and cross over the lane to turn left. If takes a lot of concentration to prevent this. The first major intersection I hit was a double wide divided boulevard. I mistakenly crossed over to turn left. About half way across I noticed the guy behind me had turned left into the wrong lane. Nope. He was right, I was wrong. I slammed on my brakes before I had a head on crash with west-bound traffic.

Also they use roundabouts here instead of stop signs and traffic lights. I really like them. They are very efficient, but can scare the hell out of you if you don't know what you are doing (or more importantly, what the others are doing). At least with a round-about the collisions that do occur tend to be side to side, not head ons.

My weekend road trip was over 1500km (932 miles), so I had a lot of practice. I am going to be taking my drivers license test in a couple of weeks. I'll let you know how it goes.