Irish Driving

In one word…scary. But I think that is just because I am not used to driving on the left side of the road in a tiny car on small lanes. Driving on the left proved to be challenging but doable as long as I remembered three important things. ‘Drive on the left’, ‘left turn, easy turn’, and ‘right turn, hard turn’ were frequently uttered as I approached an intersection. My most difficult maneuvers were backing up, parking, and turning into petrol stations and side of the road shops, since it took me some thought as to which lane I should enter from and exit to. The size of the driving lanes did not make things much easier. In the city if I wandered off a main road, I would end up on a hilly two-lane road with parked cars taking up half of one of the lanes. In the country, points along our drive had no shoulder but rather a stone wall sprouting from the yellow line marking where the lane ended. On one country road I got trapped in an obstacle course of sheep. Even with these small lanes and several obstacles, the Irish drivers were comfortable darting along while I was freaking out. City navigating proved to be much more difficult than navigating the country. An integrate system of one way roads was what I faced every time I entered a city centre. Once inside these limits one wrong turn lead to at least a half hour delay, and I made several wrong turns. Wrong turns were easy to come by with the deficient amount of both road signs and directional signs. We had two options for trying to get from point A to point B, you could either try to follow a map or follow the directional signs, and neither worked very well. If we tried to follow a map we often were unaware of what street we were driving on or what road we had just passed. But if you tried to follow that directional signs, they would put you on the right path and then you’d face a fork in the road with no next sign to guide you. One of the aspects of Irish that I rather enjoyed was the roundabouts. You drive along and then all of the sudden you’d be faced with the challenge of driving along in a circle trying to navigate a way out. Sometimes after I’d find a way out I then found myself entering an adjacent roundabout. Despite all my fears and difficulties, driving seemed fairly safe. Driving along the two lane country carriageways we’d often see signs such as ’45 people killed on Kerry roads in the last 4 years.’ Now maybe that scares a lot of Irish, I almost found it to be a relief. The Irish put a high emphasis on driving safety. Apparently getting an Irish driver’s license requires you to pass a difficult examination. A big reason that Irish driving is so much safer than American driving is because when the Irish drive they have to focus on the road and actually driving. Actually focusing on what you are doing is seems less important in the US.