12 December 2005: North America

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riving in California can be very different compared to the United Kingdom. Once you’re away from the fundamental difference of being on the wrong (opposite) side of the road and of having to get into what feels like the passenger side of the car, it becomes easier. It’s still tempting to pull into the left hand lane of the road when turning left at a quiet junction but at least the speed limits are posted in miles per hour.

There are a few oddities about the American driving rules. One very sensible idea is that of being able to turn right on a red light, providing you are able to do so without impeding other traffic of course. This is a form of filtering and helps traffic flow.

The other oddity is that of four way stops. Here the rule is “first come, first serve,” but to a British driver they can feel rather quaint. “If in doubt, don’t move” is the standard rule in the UK but this doesn’t always translate too well for California. If you delay you get honked at, but a beep of the horn in California doesn’t mean the same as it does in the UK. In Great Britain we often consider somebody beeping their horn at us as being rude or aggressive and some drivers take the hump and seek to retaliate by either using their car’s own horn or shaking their fist. In America, it’s usually just a gentle reminder. One thing I kept in mind was that road rage in America may involve firearms, whereas in the United Kingdom it’s less likely (that’s the theory at least).

Once you’re over that, driving in California becomes relaxing and not as competitive as it can feel in the United Kingdom.

The American highways have different speed limits. In California some freeways or highways have a maximum speed limit of seventy five miles per hour. Certain sections have much lower speed limits though. Roadworks – known as “construction works” in California – seem to cause minimal disruption compared to the UK. I think we have all of their traffic cones!

As for the cars, relatively few cars have four cylinders. Most have six or more. A few have three or five. It just so happened that the two cars I drove the most both had four cylinders, a 2004 PT Cruiser and a 2005 Toyota Prius. The Prius is a hybrid car, it combines an electric motor and petrol engine, very successfully as it happens. You can read more about the Prius here. Both are automatics, the PT Cruiser using a four speed transmission and the Prius having a continuously variable transmission (or CVT), so both are very easy to drive. I can’t really judge their “involvement” as a drivers’ car because in California, one has to try to find a European road, but both cars are sold in Europe and the United Kingdom with minimal changes to the mechanicals and are not the same rolling sofas that many other cars sold in America are. I spent more time in the Prius (clocking up well over a thousand miles and averaging over sixty miles per UK gallon).

One thing I have noticed about the Californian freeways is that the Americans are not afraid of relatively steep gradients. Roads don’t look as steep when the gradient goes on for several miles and is something like eight percent. They also don’t seem as steep when you have cruise control set and the Prius is using both engines and relatively low gear ratio for mile after mile... That and watching the engine coolant temperature gradually rise!

Driving in California has proven to be a useful distraction from Kermit’s crash, the Accord and the miserable weather of back home but I know it can’t last.