From the archives of Bob Montgomery, motoring historian
Right-Hand Drive: To this day, Ireland and Britain, together with a large number of her ex-colonies, persist in driving on the left side of the road and seating the driver on the right. Other countries which persisted with this rule have long since capitulated (the Philippines in 1945 and Sweden in 1967) and gone over to the right-hand side of the road like the rest of the world.
Why did right-hand driving become so dominant? And how did the rival preferences arise?
Neither question is easy to answer conclusively. Many spurious arguments can be trotted out in favour of either side. Perhaps we have to go back, right back, to superstition regarding the relative merits of right and left.
In Greek mythology bad luck and unlucky signs always came from the left, while in Latin the word for it was sinister. Thus it was that an army commander always marched on the right - or lucky - side of his men and thus, it would appear, came the Roman right-hand rule of the road.
Roman influence extended as far north as Germany, north-east into Romania and well into western parts of Asia, so one can see how these countries might have continued this rule as a matter of convenience long after the Romans left the scene.
But this doesn't account for Britain, where after all the Romans had a significant presence. There, it seems, the right-hand rule was forgotten as soon as the Romans were gone.
Certainly, one thing we know for a fact is that Britons were driving on the left long before Mary Tudor enacted the first known ordinance on the matter in 1555. This was followed in the mid-18th century by a ruling during the rebuilding of London Bridge (when the houses on it were being removed) - it decreed that "all carriages passing over from London are to go to the east (left) side and to London on the west (right)". In what was probably the first on-the-spot fine it was also decreed that "all offenders are to be carried before a justice and fined".
By the early 20th century, drivers of the recently arrived motor car were driving on the right everywhere in Europe with the exception of Portugal, Sweden, most parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire plus, of course, Britain and Ireland. A contemporary European guidebook for British drivers declared "country carts are sometimes careless . . . and many automobilists are often at sea and drive in the same haphazard manner". However, it added, "on the other hand, many of the better-class residents are scrupulously exact".
All very well, but none of this explains why the British choose to swim against the prevailing current? And why did so many early French manufacturers place the driver on the right-hand side at a time when the French motor industry led the world?
The great motoring historian, Kent Karslake, believed that the answer to the first question lay in that country's love of things equestrian, and I'm inclined to agree with him. Karslake pointed out that a coachman usually drove his carriage from the centre of the box, moving to the right when he shared this seat with others. He believed that the positioning of French drivers to the right was a form of snobbery derived from horse-drawn days - this positioning of the chauffeur placed him on a social level with the coachman.
I have made no mention of the Americans. The reason is simple - they follow an entirely different logic in their choice of which side of the road on which they drive. But that, as they say, is a story for another day.