Left Behind: Driving a Car Overseas

From the back seat, I instinctively jammed on the brake, or where the brake would be in my car back in the U.S.  In the front seat, the rideshare driver took a tight left, then a wide right.

I gasped and braced for impact.

Miraculously, the traffic in central Melbourne opened up and we shot through.

I exhaled.

Oh, right.

Or … left.

Or … wait, what?

Minutes later, safely deposited on the curb, my husband and I started walking down the street.

Or tried to.

It wasn't crowded, but everyone was in our way.

Oh, right.

Stay to the left, even on the sidewalk.

The muscle memory that smooths car and foot travel in the U.S. snarls movement in countries who drive on the opposite side of the road and walk on the opposite side of the sidewalk. The U.K., New Zealand and Australia are popular destinations for U.S. travelers because those countries speak English. Reading road and directional signs is no problem.

But muscles can't be retrained in a snap, which makes navigating treacherous. Online group discussions are rife with horror stories about overconfident American drivers sailing off Scottish cliffs and scraping against ancient buildings as they merrily occupy the lanes where they feel most at home.

As my high school driving instructor used to say, "Your half of the road is not the middle," but try pulling yourself into the correct lane against every instinct.

A legend in our family is my husband's white-knuckle tour of the island of Jersey, between France and England. With one terrified wife riding shotgun (in the left front seat) and three screaming teen daughters in the back, he edged our very mini rental van around mossy stone walls, through narrow, hedge-encroached country roads, and slowly crept through roundabouts, invoking honks at every turn.

Never again, he swore, which is why we didn't even consider hiring a car for our January 2023 trip to Melbourne and Hobart, Tasmania. We wanted to see the Great Ocean Road, the countryside and historic sites of Tasmania, but we certainly didn't want to instigate an accident.

So, we centered our travel around three local travel strategies: taking daytrips with local tour companies; staying in walk-to-everything hotels; and using street-level public transportation.

Local tour operators, we learned, are best found through recommendations made by other travelers at destination-specific Facebook groups. The Traveling Tasmania Facebook group helped me vet options in advance and  zero in on two Hobart-based providers that were repeatedly celebrated as excellent.

Instead of inching up Mount Wellington to view a full third of the island, we put ourselves in the capable hands of a bus driver who navigated the hairpin turns and rocky shoulders with ease. Similar Facebook groups exist for most other destinations, too.

To see the Great Ocean Road, which traces the continental underbelly, I used an international online platform, Viator, to make a reservation (months in advance) for a 12-hour tour. But the operator never showed up, and while Viator quickly refunded our money, it didn't find us an alternative, leaving us with an empty day. Fortunately, the concierge at our Melbourne hotel worked his magic and booked us with a different operator for a couple days later. Lesson learned: local experts are the go-to source for day trips.

For city stays, we chose centrally located hotels, which made it easy to formulate manageable walking itineraries and pace ourselves through museums, waterfronts, dining and markets. From the Tasman hotel in Hobart, we caught a bay cruise; three museums; three shopping districts; the weekly crafter's market; four museums; six restaurants; and connections for three day tours. Lower-cost hotels on the periphery of downtown Hobart would have been less expensive per night but would have cost more in rideshares.

Finally, streetcars and trolleys are making a comeback in many older cities, like Melbourne. Unlike the disorienting dive underground to navigate a subway, street-level public transit enables you to keep track of where you are and where you're going. It's relatively inexpensive and easy to figure out.

If, after all this, an itinerary absolutely demanded that we rent a car to drive on the left, we at least could at least be more prepared than we were in Jersey.

William Van Tassel oversees driver safety curricula for the American Automobile Association (AAA) and has driven on the left – on purpose – when racing cars. You don't have to plunge in cold, he says, and you can start to create a little muscle memory by practicing left-side driving before you climb into the right-side driver's seat. Watch some online videos that virtually put you in the right-side driver's seat and see how well you can keep up, from the safety of your home office.

If left-side driving still seems like the way to go, practice beforehand in an empty parking lot. "Practice making a left turn nice and tight, and a right turn that goes further into the intersection," says Van Tassel. "After trying it, you might say, 'I can pull this off.'

Another way to assess your likely risk: find out if you need to get an international driver's license and if you qualify. Also, check with your auto insurer to see if you have to buy additional coverage. Compare the cost of any additional coverage and the cost of renting a car with the total cost of joining local tours and situating yourself for maximum walking and you'll have a good idea as to whether the stress and learning curve is worth it.

And don't expect to ever relax in the right-hand driver's seat. While we were part of a small group touring the cliffs and farms of Bruny Island, which tags off the southern coast of Tasmania, I chatted up our tour guide, who grew up in Indiana. Overambitious Americans, he said, think that opposite-side driving will be hard in the city and easy on rural roads, but it's actually the other way around.

"In the city," he said, "you can just follow the car in front of you. But out in the country, people just go back to their usual habits, because they're the only one on the road. Then suddenly they're not the only one, and that's when they crash." 

Joanne Cleaver is a freelance writer based in Charlotte, N.C. She covers women's issues, travel, entrepreneurship, financial planning and retirement readiness. She has authored seven nonfiction books, the most recent being The Career Lattice: Combat Brain Drain, Improve Company Culture, and Attract Top Talent. Read More