Knights of old

It goes back all the way to the Romans, not to the Medieval period - and was common across Europe right up until the French Revolution. Because the French royals had always ridden on the left, the French decided to swap to the other side because "republic!" Napoleon, who was left-handed and found it easier to fight from the right, spread the new system everywhere he conquered. America began driving on the right, too, because of the way the seats on their wagons were arranged. Britain never met Napoleon's army in the British Isles, so it kept to what was then the standard way - as still used by about 40% of the world's population.

@Grutness What I have heard is pretty much the same as what you are saying here.
The countries that drive on the right, is France, her colonies, and her allies. The rest of the world drive on the left.
Japan and Thailand have never been colonies, and they drive on the left. Sweden was not an ally of France during the Napoleonic wars, and they were driving on the left until 1967. I don't know too much about other countries.

Basically, before the introduction of the car, nobody were DRIVING on the right or left. They were driving in the middle of the road, and they pulled over to one side when they met other people on the road. And since (for a right handed person) the sword would usually be on the left side of their bodies, they wanted to prevent anyone from blocking their sword. And thus they wanted to pass others on the left.

@Grutness Fwiw, this seems to be a myth. There is no historical evidence for Napoleon or the French Revolution having changed the side of the road. Spain, which Napoleon controlled, didnt switch to right hand drive until 1918. Italy had no unified rule about it until the allies in WW1 enforced left hand drive for a while and Mussolini decreed right hand drive in 1923. There is however evidence from Pompeii and other archeological sites that the Romans kept to the right.

Driving on the left is inferior to driving on the right. Sorry, England. This is because with a left hand steering wheel, you can switch gears, steer, and indicate, all at the same time. You can't do that with a right hand steering wheel, as the indicator stalk is on the left of the steering wheel, and your left hand is busy shifting gears. And I run into this issue all the time, whenever I get to an offset road. You know, like you come to a main road and you need to make a left and then immediately make a right. With the steering on the left I can flick the indicator stalk as I am moving the steering wheel.

@Cris First time I read a common-sense-based response to this (often jokingly) divisive cuestion. 10/10.

@Cris That is true for English cars (generally) but in some other countries like Japan, Australia, New Zealand etc. they actually have the stalks mirrored as well. So you can do the same thing there.

@hanzi The slightly more fundamental problem is that there are only so many buttons, knobs, etc that can fit between the driver and the door. The bulk of the controls are on the other side. On a fully-mirrored car, a right-handed driver is using their dexterous hand to do a simple motion (pushing a lever up or down) while using their clumsier hand to do a more important and precise motion (changing to the desired gear).

@merget This is true. However, if you are used to changing gears with your left hand, it will become second nature to you. And it will thus be a lot easier for you to change gear with your left hand than with your right hand. This all comes down to training and habit.

@Cris How old is your car that it has a manual shift? I love a manual, but have hot had one since 2003. Even that is a late transition to automatic. If I really want to change gears, I can use a paddle shifter. It is much less satisfying, but that is what a modern car will have.

@GaryM @Nihil
The vast majority of European market cars are sold with manual transmissions, many cars aren't even offered in automatic, and those that offer automatic transmissions will mostly just have it as an expensive special order option/"upgrade". At least ignoring high-end cars and electric vehicles.

At least in some countries automatic is also seen as a luxury option, so taxed accordingly.

@Vcent "The vast majority of European market cars are sold with manual transmissions"

That *used* to be true; I still remember the times when the ballpark figures were summarized as "USA is 90% automatic, Germany 90% manual". Nowadays, after automatic gearboxes *really* became more fuel-saving than the average driver, half of the new cars sold and one third of those currently registered in Germany are automatic. Still a costly extra, though.

@JoB And you almost can't buy a German car in the US with a manual transmission. VW is one of the holdouts, and they're ending manuals in the US this year.
The US is 99% automatic now, manual has been a costly extra in the few models that offer them for years.

@VictorMortimer Weeeell, it's *really not* like "a 'German' car [sold] in the U.S." would be Germany-made or - at least as far as the selection of available *options* goes - made for sale in Germany ...

[remembers an even *more* distant past where moving from France to Germany and taking your France-bought car along required you to have the headlights replaced X-D - no, not because of LHD vs. RHD, but because 'til '93, they had *yellow* headlights, which Germany forbade back in '63]

@Vcent That's no longer true. Even in one of the manual transmission's last holdouts, Europe was down to barely over 30% of new cars sold last year being manual.
Automatics are now more efficient, and with fuel prices over there it no longer makes sense to drive a manual.
Manuals are apparently completely gone in Korea now, about 1% of new cars in the US, around 2% in Japan, 4% in China, and highest in South Africa where they're still not even a majority at 45%.
And you can't really ignore electric cars any more. And they don't really have transmissions at all.

@GaryM I have a 2022 model car. And it has a manual transmission.

@GaryM Up here in Finland the amounts of new manual vs automatic transmission cars registered was still 50/50 10 years ago, so 10 years after the 2003 you cited as a "late transition". In 2020 new cars sold were still 20-25% manual (different sources say different figures). Add in to that the fact that the average age of cars here is around 13 years, and there are a lot of manuals still about. I admit I haven't driven one myself in a while though, possibly years (I don't own a car, and can't remember the specifics on all rentals). In 2023, however, only about 10% of new cars had manual transmission, but a big reason for this is that many models don't offer a manual option anymore. Automatics are still slightly more expensive, but not as much as they used to be.

@Cris They still make manual transmissions in the UK? Most makes/models aren't even offered with them here in the US anymore and the few that are almost always have to be special ordered...

@Nihil automatic transmissions (for non-electric) cars are less efficient. With European fuel prices, the difference matters. Most of us drive manual to save costs. Automatic transmissions certainly exist, but are generally only used by people who join traffic jams every day (I hate automatic transmissions, but if I'm likely to be stuck in jams for over an hour, my left foot overrules my feelings).

@dion_b Automatic transmissions haven't been less efficient for several years now. Dual clutch instead of torque converter, 6 - 10 gears, and a computer that can shift better than you can took care of that a long time ago. The manual is less efficient now.
And when you get to hybrids there's infinite gears and the engine doesn't run when it's not needed.
Electrics don't even need a transmission, just a fixed-ratio gearbox, because it doesn't matter what gear you're in when the power band is "yes".

@VictorMortimer beg to differ. Looking at advertised figures, automatic transmissions on pure combustion engines (hybrids and electrics obviously are in separate category) may seem better, but in the real world, they still under-perform. The German website Spritmonitor.de enables people to log actual fuel purchased vs distance driven and gives an independent counterpoint to advertised figures. I took the top 3 selling combustion-fueled cars of 2023 in Europe (can't comment on other parts of the world as people there don't post on Spritmonitor), the Dacia Sandero, Volkswagen T-Roc and Peugeot 208, and selected petrol (i.e. not diesel or hybrid) drive chains and cars built since 2019, so last five years. In all three cases, people with automatic transmissions reported 8-11% higher consumption than people with the same car but manual transmission. It's not just one technology - the Sandero uses CVT, the T-Roc a DSG dual-clutch and the 208 an 8-gear torque converter. I also looked up my own car (Citroen C4 Grand Picasso) and saw the same 10% difference, I'm sure there will be exceptions and possibly the situation with relatively large low-compression engines in US will be different to the smaller high-compression ones common in EU. However based on these numbers, with the most popular cars in this part of the world, the automatic option is still less economical.

@Cris In Britain and other countries that drive on the left, the indicator is often on the right.

@Cris As @Kemm is saying, this may be the first time I have read a common-sense-based reason for this.
However, I am quite certain that people from countries that drive on the left have similar common-sense-based reasons for why that is better. And it's such a minor issue that I don't think it maters that much.

My argument is that it's much more dangerous to drive on the wrong side of the road, than to drive on the right side of the road.

@Cris I only really need one reason for why driving on the right is better: Having the shifter on the right is better for a right handed person. Even British racing cars had the shifters on the right post-50s (in the 50s you could even see shifters in between the legs in some racing cars...), going against their normal cars. =)

And a lot, if not most, of the best Le Mans prototype racing cars back when they had manual gears, with seats on the right side like ones built by Ferrari, Porsche and Ford, put the shifter on the right side as well, in an otherwise inconvenient position between the seat and the door.

Some people say that shifting with your left hand lets the dominant right hand of most people remain on the steering wheel, I say poppycock. It's much easier to operate the simple rotating steering wheel with your left hand, while using your dominant right for the potentially finicky stick shifter (especially back in the day, or in a racing scenario) that needs to move in multiple directions and be synchronized with the clutch and throttle.

@jubuttib I currently drive a VW with a five speed manual. Some decades ago, I spent a couple of years in a "drive on the left" country, where I drove an Austin 1100 with four speed manual. I can't say that shifting left-handed ever caused me any difficulty, and I'm right handed.

@Cris Changing diorection and switching your indicator at the same time is bad driving. The indicator is to tell people what you are about to do (change direction) not what you've just done. Mirror, signal and then manouver. It's also pretty rare to change gears at the same time as you need to trigger your indicators and make a turn.

@Cris As one of the few Americans who actually can drive a manual transmission car (though I'd rather not, so I don't own one) I'd have to have an automatic in England. There's no way I could shift effectively with my left arm. I'd be fine (but annoyed) with a manual in the rest of Europe.
Oddly enough, I don't have a problem shifting with my left foot and clutching with my left hand (but I still want an automatic bike because lanesplitting is illegal here and being stuck in traffic with a manual sucks even more on two wheels than it does on four).

Oh yeah, when HE does it it’s “of historic relevance” but when I do it I’m “a danger to my fellow motorists”…

@Nizzemancer Håll till höger Svensson

Have any of you driven a cart or carriage? You sit on the right with the whip in your right hand, it keeps it out of the load behind you. Not quite a sword, but carts are more common than mounted knights. Still intimidating.

You are mistaken, they do not drive on the left. They drive on the wrong..

@Carewolf You are mistaken.
It's the same thing.

If you drive on the right then your shield arm is facing the oncoming traffic. I find that a lot more comforting than having my sword arm free.

@TheOtherPenn well, it might not be as effective maybe but with a sword you can parry as well as attack, so it's both defensive and offensive

@SpeakerToMeat The same is true of your shield arm; in many historical combat arts, the shield was just as much a weapon as the sword.

@SpeakerToMeat Parrying with your sword was NOT a common thing in combat during the medieval era

@TheOtherPenn You really just need a passenger either way. There's a reason the front seat is called "shotgun".

(Ok, so these days it's more likely to be a 9 or AR than an actual shotgun, but the point remains.)

The Latin word for left is sinister. The English took that word and (yada yada) ... burned at the stake.

You can shoot a gun with either hand. That's the only reason Americans don't drive on the left.

Spiral stairs in castle turrets were built such that the wall would be on the right when climbing. The defender would be able to swing a sword right handed while the aggressor climbing the stairs would have to use their left. Left handed knights were heavily recruited to overcome the issue.

@GaryM Given the beliefs about lefties over the centuries, I'm surprised they were able to find any that weren't burnt at the stake and willing to admit to it.

@GaryM I'm told that if you count how many staircases spiral each way it's basically random. This is a cool-sounding fact that may not actually be true. I find that fascinating.

@GaryM I think you are slightly confused here.
If the wall is on the right while you're climbing, then your shield will be towards the defender, who will be somewhat on your left. And it's easy for you to stab towards the left. So this would give an advantage to the climber.
If there even IS a custom for this, then I would assume the stairs would be built such that the outer wall would be on the LEFT for anyone fighting their way into the castle. Meaning anyone climbing up the castle, or anyone descending into the basements.

back in the days they sacrificed humans. i think it is time to move on a bit