From: msb@sq.sq.com (Mark Brader)
Subject: Re: origin of which side of the road to drive on
Organization: SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, Canada
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 93 05:51:43 GMT

I'll first point out that there are two versions of the practice of driving
on the right (or left).  In one version you must do it almost all the time,
and in the other, only when it actually matters because of an oncoming
vehicle.  Where roads are poor and narrow, the second version tends to
apply, so that most of the time vehicles (or horses) are/were driven down
the center of the road.  But the phrase "driving on the right" tends to
suggest the first version.  For this reason "passing on the right" is
sometimes used instead, but *this* is confusing to North Americans to
whom "pass" means "overtake".  Since it's the left/right distinction
that matters in this article, I'll be imprecise and use the term "driving
on the right" to cover both versions.

> Tony Randall ... about ten years ago ... claimed that
> when roads were first invented (Rome, or whenever), the Pope decreed that
> there should be a standard, and (apparently arbitrarily) chose the left
> side of the road.

There were Roman roads before there were Popes, and there seems to be no
knowledge of which side of them, if any, it was the usual custom to drive
on.  Unfortunately no photographs from those times have survived -- or at
least, it'll cost you two-fifty to get one. :-)

> Later, when Napolean went a-conquering, being the
> sacrilegious person he was :-) he made each country he invaded "drive" on
> the right side of the road.  He never made it to Great Britain, so they
> still follow the Pope's rule.

According to a Toronto Star article of October 20, 1991, this is partly
correct.  Some Pope had indeed decreed left-hand driving in Europe, and
Robespierre (not Napoleon [or Napolean :-)]) decreed right-hand driving
for France as an anti-papal statement.  As Napoleon enlarged French-
controlled territory, right-hand driving followed.

However, the influence of the Catholic church in Britain since the time of
Henry VIII had been pretty minimal, so if left-hand driving was in fact
customary there, it was *only* a matter of custom and not papal decree.
It was 1835 when the first British law requiring left-hand driving was passed.

> I'd assume people in Canada and the US
> picked up the French tradition rather than the British.

I suspect the custom in the US simply arose independently -- maybe there
was no established custom in Britain in the days when they were colonizing
North America's east coast.

As for Canada, in 1812 what is now the southern part of the province of
Ontario was the British colony of Upper Canada.  A law was passed here
in that year requiring driving on the right... for horse-drawn sleighs!
Note that this is earlier than the British law, so maybe US practice was
an influence; I don't know.

The provinces of British Columbia, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince
Edward Island did have left-hand driving until 1922-24 -- they must have
changed at about the same time the first long-distance roads passable by
automobiles were being built.  And Newfoundland, which is more isolated
and was not part of Canada until 1949, changed from the left to the right
in 1947.
-- 
Mark Brader			"Relax -- I know the procedures backwards."
SoftQuad Inc., Toronto		"Yeah, well, that's a quick way to get killed."
utzoo!sq!msb, msb@sq.com			-- Chris Boucher, Star Cops

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