janisj

I am absolutely solely right handed, totally useless w/ my left hand, know how to drive a stick at home, but haven't driven one Stateside in more than 15 years. Yet, I have absolutely NO PROBLEMS driving a stick in Ireland or the UK. In fact I personally think getting a stick helps. IME w/ friends -- when they get into trouble driving on the 'wrong' side of the road is when they get too comfortable and sort of go into autopilot. Especially on narrow roads, in car parks, etc.

Having the gear shift sitting over there on your left is just one more mental signal that things are 'different' and help keep you on your toes. Plus -- you aren't doing any power shifting, or trying to pull the competition off the line

You are just gently going up and down through the gears. So what if you miss a gear once in a while - it won't wreck the car.

PLUS -- all the money you save w/ a stick can be used for a splurge on the trip.

NOW - the above only applies if one is already competent w/ a standard transmission. You don't want to be learning on the fly.

IMO <i>Some</i> (don't get mad - I only said <u>some</u folks who can't cope w/ a stick are either a bit nervous driving in ANY unfamiliar situations/locations, or aren't confident drivers even back home.

summersquash

Get an automatic if you can. The bigest problem for me is the narrow roads and the roundabouts. It is kind of confusing if you are trying to shift down and go left instead of right around the circles & reading the road signs. Also there isn't many stop signs since you have the roundabouts so you don't have time to stop and think before you take off, but my daughter picked up very quick when she moved to the UK. I think maybe it is harder for us older folks. If you know where you are going or have someone else in the car to read the road map you will probably be fine if you get an automatic.

flanneruk

Do remember that millions of us change sides, language and measurement systems EVERY time we go on holiday. WE don't go into the inane connitions so many of your compatriots indulge in. But we DO adopt sensible precautions.

1. Know the traffic rules. It's just untrue to claim "Also there isn't many stop signs since you have the roundabouts"", for example. Before entering ANY roundabout - or motorway - you encounter dotted lines between you and the new road. These mean "those already on this road have priority. You must stop if proceeding would impinge on this: but if your entrance is clear, go ahead". Generally European rules are 99% standard acrtoss the continent - but understand the Irish rules at www.rulesoftheroad.ie

2. It takes some time to get used even to the controls. So try to start your car hire somewhere completely safe, like an airport car park. Tootle round a bit till you're comfortable with the controls. Then and only then should you let yourself encounter traffic.

3. It's a common American myth that small towns are easier to deal with than big ones. Geberally the opposite if anything, and starting a hire in the middle of any town means you're dealing with traffic within seconds. This just isn't long enough to get used, though in parts of London or Dublin you'll at least debouche into a one-way system. In smaller towns, you might often find yourself having to make a right-hand turn almost as soon as you've started. Whenever possible, hire from an airport.

4. EVERY time you start driving again - even after a five minute lavatory break - your instinct is to do things the way you do at home. This is especially true after lunch and dinner, and starting each morning: but it's a risk on every single restart. Develop a procedure for reminding yourself to drive on the proper side at EVERY restart. You won't manage this 100% of the time: but the first time you get it wrong, you'll be shocked enough to get it right for the next year at least

5. It's YOUR responsibilty to get it right, not other road users'. In emergency, your instinct will often revert to the way you drive at home. My wife is still suffering the backlash from an American doing just this nearby (our car was a writeoff: she - just - wasn't). A neighbour's family weren't so fortunate when a Potuguese driver made the same mistake close by. The Portuguese driver's alive, but the neighbour isn't.
Do NOT take risks you're not confident you can handle.

6. This often upsets Americans. But it really is the height of irresponsible folly for someone sleep-deprived and jet-lagged (not the same thing) to take control of a lethal weapon under circumstances they've got no experience of. Though I hire cars after daytime flights to the US, I wouldn't dream of doing so after overnight flights, even to countries like Australia that drive on the proper side.

Getting off an overnight plane at Dublin or Shannon, then driving on the left for the first time, is the act of a criminal lunatic. I don't live in Ireland, so it's really none of my business what lunacy foreign tourists get up to there. But if you're thinking of doing it in Britain - please stay away.

If giving yourself a decent night's sleep screws your holiday timetable, just think what driving with inadequate reflexes does. To you and the other poor sods killed or maimed as a result.

MissPrism

....One thing that spooked me was the dark roads in Northern Ireland at night.....

It's strange how people differ.
I really like the lack of light pollution in Northern Ireland.
You can actually see the stars.

walkinaround

>>>>>
Do remember that millions of us change sides, language and measurement systems EVERY time we go on holiday. WE don't go into the inane connitions so many of your compatriots indulge in.
>>>>>>

if you strip away flanner's predictable insulting bravado nonsense, most of what he says does make sense.

unfortunately we britons (and those who still, for some reason, bow to us) are the root of the problem. civilised countries adopted the worldwide standard of driving on the right long ago but we stubbornly cling to the argument that we drive on the 'proper side'. and our colonies still benefit us in that we can use them to argue that a significant % of the world does drive on the left just like us. in this globalised world, something so fundamental and life-dependent as the side of the road you drive on, needs to be standardised...at least in the EU for god's sake. how many accidents are caused by this...and it's not just tourists, it's the thousands of commercial vehicles, lorries, etc, that need to switch back and forth...and drive on a side of the road that their vehicles were not designed to drive on. but our hubris causes us to ignore this.

flanner's right in that this is less about what you 'can do'. it's about the increased margin of risk that driving on the other side of the road presents. likewise, most people 'can' drive while intoxicated. someone can do it hundreds of times with no problems but it's likely that one day there will be a problem.

i also effortlessly switch back and forth without a 'connition' (whatever that is). i've driven on the right and the left many times including in cars designed for the 'other side'. very common. however, once after driving for a couple of hours on a french motorway in a uk car (something i had done many many times), i left the motorway to try to circle back to a junction i had missed. already a little distracted by trying to figure out my directions and having not having to think about my driving side as i was on the motorway for hours, i encountered a somewhat confusing juncture at the end of the motorway access. a split-second confusion and i had not properly assessed the direction of car travel on the road i was trying to enter and i very nearly could have killed several people including someone on a bicycle. luckily there was no collision and embarrassment was the only result but it was very close.

i think that this is the way most accidents caused by the 'wrong side of the road' problem happen. i would guess that few are caused by 'stupid' people not knowing how to drive on the other side for the first time and many more happen when confidence is acquired. perhaps similar to drink driving in this respect. and in another day, drink driving also had a bit of bravado attached to it. but if we want to travel to other countries and if we want to have cross boarder trade, we need to deal with a lack of standardisation in driving sides, unfortunately.

Cowboy1968

I've never driven anything but a stick, but shifting gear with my left hand still is nothing I like. I can't even properly hold a pint with my left.

Unfortunately, flanner is spot on with each and every item.
I see no benefit in driving after a night flight, when you can start your vacation by using airport buses to Dublin or Cork city, or take a frequent Expressway bus from Shannon to, for example, Ennis or Limerick.
Next day, you can take the bus again to the airport and rent from there. As flanner said, it's much easier to drive your very first kilometres on the other side of the road from an airport parking lot to the nearby motorway. The road layout will keep you on the proper side, and driving on the motorway leaves you few options to get on the wrong side.

My friends moved to Ireland in 2006, and it took them one full year of daily driving until they *re-programmed* their brains that even in a spontanous hazardous situation they will automatically pull over to the proper/left side.

Especially after short breaks, like taking a photo or filling up, you can experience one of those braindead moments that your instinct puts you on the wrong side of the road. Or when you are driving on an unmarked rural road for some time without any oncoming traffic, and suddenly a car gets in sight and you have no marked lane to stick to. It often helps when the passengers stay alert, too, and say "drive on the left". You don't have to be as drastic as a friend of mine who invented the short rhyme "ditch the bitch" to remind himself that he must align the side his wife is sitting on with the curb

rs899

Go for the stick. As others have said it will take some effort, but you should be able to cope.

We are not all programmed the same. After driving sticks for 30 odd years righty, I did not feel comfortable after my first 4 day stint in Ireland. I particularly had difficulties remembering proper lanes and downshifting in "crisis" situations. A few times I would still reach out with my right hand and smack the door thinking I was shifting righty. But, apart from some feelings of a few Irish drivers (sorry about that) no damage done. I agree with Cowboy to pick up at an airport and do some country driving first before venturing to the cities.

Rick

julies

This is an interesting topic and something that many travelers obviously face. If this were our first trip away from the US, we wouldn't even contemplate the idea of driving. But, we've driven tens of thousands of miles on the continent so are familiar with European traffic patterns, signs, roundabouts, lack of easy parking, narrow roads etc. The more I think about it, I think the major challenge will be just remembering to drive on the left much more than the idea of having to manually change gears.

We will take time to practice in a lot though because I am just remembering an embarassing few moments I had with a rental car in Mexico this winter. My husband had done all of the driving on the trip and I hadn't even gotten behind the wheel, but one day I dropped him off so he could fish in a remote area. I drove around for a bit and stopped at a store. When I got back in the car I realized that no matter what I tried I could not get the stick shift car in reverse. I just couldn't find the correct gear slot. Luckily I was in a place where I could pull out straighty forward without having to go in reverse. But, for the rest of the time until I picked him up, I had to only find places to park where I could pull straight out to the front. When I finally (thank God) picked him up again, I asked how in the world one got this car into reverse. He said he'd had difficulty when we first picked up the car unbtil he remembered another rental car we'd once had where you had to pull up on the shift to go into reverse. That is why one practices first, so one can learn about the car in a controlled environment.

Hastobe_Katt

The secret is having a right hand drive car when you are driving on the left and vice versa. We spend part of our year in the UK (driving on the left) and part in France (driving on the right). As long as we are in the appropriate car it's instinctive and in minutes my mind has 'switched'.