AW: Left - Right (was: SER1 English/American)

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Dear all, most of the legends about traffic on the left ort he right or
just legends. My late wife investigated that and wrote an article about
it; here's the gist of it:

Whether traffic is on the left or right is more a question of chance
than anything else. Of course somebody, at one point in time, had to
make a decision, but the chance was about fifty-fifty. Take Austria, for
example: After WW I we became a federal republic with nine states; some
had traffic on the left, and some on the right, until we were occupied
by Germany in '38 and changed to traffic on the right, like Germany.
Until then, if you drove through Austria from Germany to Yugoslavia, you
had to change the side four times! This also debunks the myth about
French influence: Austria was occupied by the French in the early 19th
century, and still did not change to right-hand traffic. Sweden had a
French king, a brother in law of Napoleon, and drove on the left until
the 1960's (I happened to live there wehen they changed to the right -
this was in '66 or '67 - organized perfectly, and went without a hitch).


Actually, when my wife started investigating, she looked up
Transportation in one of our older Britannicas, and found "See Prison
Discipline".

Obligatory Land-Rover content: Of course we all know that the original
prototype had center steering. I had always wondered how that worked,
since the engine would clash with the steering column; in the last
Legend there was an article about converting a Jeep to take a Rover
engine and gearbox, and it mentioned in passing that the steering column
was divided, with the lower part in its original position and the upper
part moved to the middle, and a chain drive connecting them.

Regards
Peter Hirsch
Vienna, Austria  


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