Positives & Negatives of Self-Driving
 

Many of you have rented a car and self-driven in Iceland during July. What were your positives and negatives about self-driving? We are debating whether to drive ourselves or hire a company. We are not planning to go off road, just the Ring Road around the country.

We liked being able to set our own schedule, seeing what we wanted for as long as we wanted.

Positives of driving yourself:

Go where you want exactly when you want
Can change course if you see something unplanned you have to see
You can see many more sights in the countryside and small towns
Driving on some of the major highways - we both love driving fast cars fast


Possible negatives of driving yourself:

Driving in an area you're unfamiliar with (not an issue for us since we get good maps, study them before leaving and both have a good sense of direction)

(Have not gotten lost for more than about 10 minutes in more than 20 rod trips in all parts of europe)

Have to wonder if the above poster ever drove in Iceland, given the irrelevant responses. You're not going to get lost on the "ring", and it's not about visiting small towns, which are of little interest in Iceland. I wouldn't go over the speed limit in Iceland. Police have nothing better to do, and it's not a place to drive speedily anyway.

The overwhelming positive for me of driving in Iceland was being choosy about where I wanted to linger when it came to recommended sights on the "ring", and which ones I wanted to skip out of quickly due to lack of interest, which included some of the most often recommended sights in guidebooks.

The only negative I can recall is driving on a fairly rough stretch of road in a rental car whose tires I worried might not be up to the task. If I were doing it again, I'd pony up a few extra krona to get a sturdy vehicle.

I was lucky with perfectly dry, even sunny patches of weather for my visit, but I gather that any time of year in Iceland you need to be prepared for rain and fog.

Self-driving is my preferred method since, as nearly all the other posters said, i have control of where I go and how long I stay. It was amazingly easy to drive in Iceland because there's only one main road, so you don't get confused by intersections with multi-lane highways, no need to be in the "correct" exit lane; in September, there was very little traffic so it was easy to pull off the ring road to take a photo or stretch my legs; signage is clear; and the road itself is a pleasure to drive since it's smooth and fairly flat.

Thank you all for your input! ��
We have decided to self-drive. We will be sure to check the tires and make sure there is a spare.

We rented and drove for 8 days last year. The only additional advice I would give is to make sure to buy insurance from the car rental company. I always use the car insurance which comes with my credit card but was advised to bite the bullet and buy the company insurance. Glad I did. There are lots of rocks flying and we did end up with a ding in the windshield. It is actually not supposed to be covered, but when I pointed it out when I dropped off the car he just said "good thing you bought the insurance from us" and off I went.

My only issue, and it would not matter whether you drove yourself of had someone else do it, I found it difficult to pull over to take pictures as there was a drop off at the side of the pavement into loose rock. But, not many cars on a lot of these roads so you can just stop and take a picture as you can usually see someone coming for miles anyhow.

Not hard to find your way around. Its a ring road. We had a GPS but that was really only to get around Reykjavik