By Barry Rueger
Published: Globe and Mail
June 18, 2026
977 words
Barry Rueger is a Canadian writer based in Cambridge.
“Left lane! Barry. LEFT LANE!” shouts my wife Susan for the tenth time in the first half hour I was behind the wheel of our rented Fiat 500, negotiating the medieval laneways of Cambridge.
I’ve been driving for more than 50 years and believe I’m a good driver, but I’m realizing very quickly that habit is 99 per cent of driving. Britain, like Australia, India and Japan, is a country where you drive on the left-hand side of the road, but fighting the urge to pull into oncoming traffic on the right was just the beginning of my problems. When you need to pause and think through your actions on a high-speed British motorway, you’re a danger to yourself and everyone else on the road.
Before we even left the car rental lot, I’m was walking up to the Fiat, keys in my hand, and.. doh… the steering wheel is on the other side of the car. This happened over and over. And the rear view mirror, which should be on my right, is now on the left, so I never know what’s behind me.
Strangely, shifting the manual transmission with my left hand instead of my right was easy. Understanding what the lines on the road meant – much less the road signs – was another challenge entirely. Fortunately the Department of Transport has a handy “Know Your Traffic Signs” booklet. In only 169 pages you can understand what a single yellow line along the curb means (“waiting prohibited” at certain times) or a double yellow line (“waiting prohibited” at all times) or a white zig-zag down the middle of the road (no stopping here because pedestrians and bikes need space).
Traffic lights, thankfully, still have red at the top and green at the bottom. One nice change is that the amber in the middle will light up just before the light turns green – those few extra moments of preparation actually make start-offs feel more relaxed and easy-going. And, like most European countries, England does not allow the left-hand equivalent to the Canadian right-turn on a red light.
In towns, the traffic is calmed using speed bumps, traffic islands and by the randomly parked cars along every street. Parallel parking is a complex manoeuvre, and even moreso when you’re backing your car into a space on the left-hand side of the street. Add to that the U.K. rules that say cars are free to park on either side of the road, regardless of which way they’ve been travelling. For a Canadian, the option to park pointing against the direction of passing cars just feels wrong.
Precisely because streets are so narrow, there’s also a long established practice of parking with two wheels well onto the sidewalk. Because this blocks the way for pedestrians, the disabled and parents with strollers, work is happening to change the rules so that drivers have to keep all four wheels squarely on the roadway.
After you’ve parked your car and are actually walking down a street, you’ll need to learn a menagerie of names for different kinds of crosswalks, beginning with a “zebra crossing” (a painted crosswalk), pushbutton activated crossings named after puffins (older pushbuttons for walkers), toucans (pushbuttons for walkers and cyclists) and pelicans (the newest technology with sensors that keep the crossing-light green until all walkers have crossed.)
One idea that I’d love to see adopted in Canada is removing the little green man across the street that tells you it’s safe to cross. At newer crossings in the U.K. you’ll find him beside you, and to your right, which forces you to look directly into oncoming traffic before stepping on the road. It doesn’t sound like much, but even when you’re not constantly forgetting which side the cars are coming from it could save your life.
And any true Brit will make sure to point out the Belisha Beacons, big yellow globes on tall black-and-white-banded poles on either side of the road. At these zebra crossings the pedestrian always has priority over cars.
All of this gives pedestrians in the U.K. a better likelihood of not getting hit by car drivers. It also means that when you’re driving you’re really conscious of pedestrians and find yourself looking in every direction. Perhaps, more importantly, in Britain you quickly learn that pedestrians, cyclists and car drivers exist as equals on the streets of most towns and cities – although London may be the exception.
We’re living in Cambridge, a small city whose streets are nestled by the wealthy University colleges and their chapels, many built 800 or 1,000 years ago.
In Cambridge, the narrow streets almost always have cars but, in the central core, bicycles outnumber cars by some 10 to one. When stopped at a red light, you’ll often find your car surrounded by a swarm of cyclists coming up on both sides. According to Josh Grantham at Camcycle, a cycling advocacy group, “66 per cent of residents cycle at least once a week. Cycling to work in Cambridge is typically estimated at around 30 to 35 per cent, which is exceptionally high by U.K. standards.”
Coming from Vancouver, it’s amazing to realize that drivers here accept that the roads are shared, not their private domain. Grantham explains that “The U.K. Highway Code now includes a hierarchy of road users, where those who can cause the most harm have the greatest responsibility to reduce danger. Street design states that pedestrians should come first, then cyclists, then public transport and finally private cars. In practice, cars are still often prioritized, and a lot of our work involves challenging that default and pushing back against car-centred thinking.”
After two months, I’d adapted to British driving, only to return to visit Nova Scotia, leaving the Halifax airport on the Veterans Memorial Highway, in another rental car, quietly shouting to myself, “Right lane Barry! RIGHT LANE!”
