Nearly the last thing I ever saw last fall was a fast-moving lorrie on Scotland's A82. My fiancée and I had pulled the rental car off the road at a scenic point somewhere between Glasgow and Ballachulish for some stretching and fresh air. She had gone a few meters up the road to the other side of some bushes that blocked the view of the traffic coming down the winding road. I'd just been given the all clear from her to cross back to our car when I stepped into the road to be met with a blast of air current as the unexpected lorrie rushed past in the lane my non-UK oriented brain didn't anticipate. Shaken, I said to her, "I almost met my instant death just then!" and her darkly witty response was, "Oh no, you'd have been in horrible agony for at least 20 minutes before dying."
The following morning over a traditional Scottish breakfast in our B&B, the inn's proprietor shared grim stories of Scotland's deadliest stretch of highway, the one we'd survived the day before. "Just last week we lost two people from the village in a head-on collision," she said with a shake of her head. I joked that I felt like I should have at least won a T-shirt that said, "I survived the A82 and all I got was this T-shirt" for not adding myself to the casualty counter.
"Look left and avoid death" is a mnemonic device that could save the lives of many foreigners on UK territory, for sure!
When my daughter and I were in Australia, neither of us wanted to rent a car for fear of automatically driving on the wrong side of their roads. Leave it to the Uber drivers and the tour buses to get it right (or should I say, "left").
Tying driving on the left hand side of the road to the evils of colonialism -- genius.
I very nearly got my my husband and myself killed in Ireland years and years ago trying to drive on the left hand side. But to be fair to the Irish, I also nearly got us killed in LA, so maybe the problem is ... me?
Nearly the last thing I ever saw last fall was a fast-moving lorrie on Scotland's A82. My fiancée and I had pulled the rental car off the road at a scenic point somewhere between Glasgow and Ballachulish for some stretching and fresh air. She had gone a few meters up the road to the other side of some bushes that blocked the view of the traffic coming down the winding road. I'd just been given the all clear from her to cross back to our car when I stepped into the road to be met with a blast of air current as the unexpected lorrie rushed past in the lane my non-UK oriented brain didn't anticipate. Shaken, I said to her, "I almost met my instant death just then!" and her darkly witty response was, "Oh no, you'd have been in horrible agony for at least 20 minutes before dying."
The following morning over a traditional Scottish breakfast in our B&B, the inn's proprietor shared grim stories of Scotland's deadliest stretch of highway, the one we'd survived the day before. "Just last week we lost two people from the village in a head-on collision," she said with a shake of her head. I joked that I felt like I should have at least won a T-shirt that said, "I survived the A82 and all I got was this T-shirt" for not adding myself to the casualty counter.
"Look left and avoid death" is a mnemonic device that could save the lives of many foreigners on UK territory, for sure!
When my daughter and I were in Australia, neither of us wanted to rent a car for fear of automatically driving on the wrong side of their roads. Leave it to the Uber drivers and the tour buses to get it right (or should I say, "left").
Tying driving on the left hand side of the road to the evils of colonialism -- genius.
I very nearly got my my husband and myself killed in Ireland years and years ago trying to drive on the left hand side. But to be fair to the Irish, I also nearly got us killed in LA, so maybe the problem is ... me?