Things that are different about driving in the UK compared to Australia
Driving around the UK is substantially different from Australia, says European correspondent Stephen Drill. Which begs the question, who is better on the road? You decide.
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They drive on the same side of the road in the UK as we do in Australia, with the steering wheel on the right, but that’s about where the similarities end.
I’ve been driving around the UK for almost a year now and I’ve noticed some major differences to roads in Australia.
They are particularly polite here, with people on London roads allowing you to turn right in traffic in front of them.
Bus drivers do it, van drivers do it and mums in 4WD’s will let you through even if it means they stop for a little longer.
However, when they do, they kill you with kindness.
They flash their lights at you to encourage you to turn right and the higher the vehicle, the brighter the flash in your eyes.
In Australia that’s the makeshift code for watch out, there’s a roadside speed camera ahead.
I’ve never been let in to turn right in Australia in peak hour traffic.
But there is a secret to this, on most of the roads you can only drive at 30km/h and that’s only outside of peak hours.
Often you crawl at slower than walking pace. On a recent bus trip a friend googled the walking time and found it would have taken about the same time on foot.
And while it’s snail’s pace in the suburbs, the freeways resemble a German autobahn.
I still have a perfect UK driver’s licence with no fines after I lived over here a decade earlier.
I plan to keep that clean driving record but it seems my fellow motorway users do not share that view.
There are very few speed limit signs on the highway, and I could not judge from the traffic exactly what they were.
People come flying past at what could easily be 150km/h, while the official limit is 112km/h.
It seems like the drivers either knew where the cameras were or simply didn’t care.
And the roads are due for a revolution here within 15 years after UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson brought forward a ban on the sale of new diesel and petrol cars to 2035.
Even hybrids will be given the boot as the UK attempts to be carbon neutral by 2050.
The only problem is I cannot see how they will have the electricity or the charging points to get everyone to move over.
Building here is notoriously slow, and the workmen fixing the gas lines in my streets have proved that in recent weeks.
Then there’s the question of how to collect enough tax to pay for the roads when people no longer use petrol.
It’s a debate we will have in Australia too. But if all the petrol cars are taken off the road, it might make the traffic a little better.
Then maybe people won’t have to flash their lights in my eyes.
Originally published as Things that are different about driving in the UK compared to Australia