carl

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle...toryID=5151406

Jamo

iTrader: (23)

link not working mate, unless your a member.

carl

I'll see if I can find the story elsewhere.

n one

iTrader: (5)

Whats he done?

carl

Link updated in original post

n one

iTrader: (5)

Ah, link works.

Creepy

?!? Is that John Palmer the driving instructor ?
And he can see the difference between LHD and RHD and UK and European traffic.
Sounds silly to me...

Creepy

ScoobySport (SdB)

To be honest, it's not as silly as it sounds.

It is very easy to do, especially when you travel a lot.

I'm out of the country (for WRC) almost as much as in, and as silly as it sounds, you can often (momentarily) forget what country you're in.

I was in a petrol station on the M40 the other day and two people started speaking to each other in italian, and I honestly had a moment (only brief obviously) where I wasn't sure what country I was in!!

When most people go on holiday and have a hire car.. it all seems different, so you easily adjust as you have to mentally remember which side of the road to drive on.

When being in other countries is completely normal, I could definitely imagine a situation where you jumped into a right hand drive car and took off on the wrong side of the road.

My sympathy goes out firstly to the family of the deceased, but also to JP as this would have been an horific thing to have to (and continue to) live with.

All the best

Simon

Cider boy

Agree with this, my job sees me living in Spain for a few months every so often, and although I never seem to have a problem over there, as soon as I get back to the UK and pull away from junctions etc I often have to think twice about which side of the road to be on. It can still happen even months after being back in the UK.

What happened to JP is not as stupid as some of the above posts are saying, particularly if you are in a right-hand drive car.

Must have been a nasty smash too

Matt.

Floyd

iTrader: (9)

I drove on the wrong side of the road a couple of times in Germany. Just lost concentration and went into auto pilot mode, unfortunately my auto pilot was for English driving Luckily the bikers were used to this and avoided me

F

Brit_in_Japan

It's surprisingly easy to do if there are no other vehicles for reference. It's also happened in the UK. Some years ago there was a NATO training exercise in Wales and a couple of Dutch soldiers were driving a truck late at night, no other traffic on the road. There were roadworks which meant they had to drive on the wrong side of the road and when the roadworks ended they continued driving on that side. Several miles later they had a head-on with a car, the driver of which died.

Chris L

I've done it aswell. I'm sure most people have had a momentary lapse when driving off the ferry or Eurotunnel. I also did it lasy year while driving through Belgium on the way back from the German Rally. As people have said, it is surprisingly easy to do.

It must have been an awful experience for JP to actually end up in a fatal accident. I wonder why it has taken so long to resolve?

Chris

DocJock

Done it several times when living in Germany.

Usually after a hard day at work and driving on autopilot.
No other traffic = no reference points.

SomeDude

Done it once in the UK after driving out of a hotel in the early morning. Fortunately I immediately realised my mistake, but it could have been ugly.