This must be a question that hard-pressed car manufacturers have asked themselves masses of times. The reason can’t give them much comfort either. It seems to date back to the time when horses, not motor vehicles, ruled the road. And it is also connected with the fact that more people are right-handed than left-handed.
The reasoning goes that in Britain and countries that followed her lead, coachmen and wagon drivers sat on the right side of their coaches, carts and wagons. This gave them plenty of room to use their whips to control the horses. When they wanted to pass another vehicle coming in the opposite direction, they naturally pulled over to the left. This gave both drivers a clear view of what both teams of horses were up to. When roads were made wider, people got used to keeping to the left side of the road – that is the theory, anyway. In many other European countries and in North America the driving tradition was different. Instead of sitting on the vehicle, drivers sat on one of the horses. They controlled the rest of the team from the saddle. And the best horse to sit on was the rear horse on the left-hand side of the team. So when a team driven like this wanted to pass another, the safest way to go was to pull to the right. Again, this gave both drivers an uninterrupted view as they passed.
In both cases the practice passed from horses to motor vehicles.
Picture Credit : Google
