Driving in Scotland

First of all, it’s a given that the driver must know (or very quickly learn) how to drive on the left side of the road, sitting in the right hand seat and using a manual transmission with his left hand.

The most outstanding thing… well, actually two outstanding things, are the narrowness of the roads and the number of roundabouts.  If you are driving in a coastal town, or in a small town, there are roundabouts every mile or so.  Even less, sometimes in just .2 miles!  Consider this:  Starting at the rotary at Look Park (Route 9) in Northampton, you could expect a rotary at Lilly Library, then another at the intersection of Maple St. in Florence, then Chestnut Street, then the high school, certainly the hospital and a large one at Smith College.  That’s truly what it’s like!  All of the entrances/exits to the motorways (think I-91) are roundabouts.  In the meantime, you have to remember to look for traffic coming from the RIGHT side, not the left!  It’s crazy.

The roads are very narrow with just a few inches on either side; when a large bus or caravan (RV) comes toward you, you move very far over to the left (read: “move over 6 more inches”).  We’ve remarked that you see NO ONE driving and texting.  There is no mental room to do it!  Everyone has to concentrate fully on the roads.  We were surprised how long it took us to travel between places; on the map it seems like it should take an hour and it takes two.  Our host, Brian, told us that Scottish miles are twice the distance…lol.  90% of the roads we’re driving on are two lanes (one in each direction), even those that look like major roads on the map (i.e., dark red lines).

Almost all of the cars are very small; I’ve seen one Dodge Caravan.  Ours is a Vauxhall Insignia, four door with a roomy trunk and it’s kind of large, yet small by American standards.  The RVs are all small and slim by U.S. standards, but seem huge here; we’d love to have one of those, but not particularly to drive it here!  The terrors of the roadways are the sight-seeing buses and logging trucks.  Absolutely no margin for error on their part (or yours as they pass in the opposite direction) and they seem to want a “wee bit” of your lane to boot.    While Paul may be one of the faster drivers on the roadways at home, he is one of the slower ones here, although perhaps not slow enough for Jan’s standards of safety.  We’ve been passed many times on narrow roads. 

Signage is another interesting thing.  The roads are calculated in miles, not kilometers, which surprised us.  The speed limits are painted on the roads in large red circles as well as on roadside signs.  There are signs that say “turn on your blinker now”, “slow down now”, and “Caution, cars approaching middle of the road” (translates to mean single lane bridge ahead).  There are white triangles and yellow zig-zags painted on the streets and we’re not quite sure what those mean.  There are white arrows painted sometimes in the middle of your lane and sometimes in the dotted white line in the middle; we think it means passing zone, but we’re not sure why the difference in where the arrow is painted.  The painted road signs are a little confusing; we learned the hard way that a “T” with the top bar in red means Dead End…. Paul had to back up quite a long way down a very narrow alleyway with only about 15” on each side of the car. 

There are blue “P” signs which may mean parking or may mean passing place.  In any instance, ahead there will be a place to pull over if there are too many cars tailing behind you so you can let them pass.  You can also apparently park in those places. 

Remarkably, our driving has been safe and we’ve seen evidence of very few accidents.  Operational theory is that everyone is paying a whole lot more attention to their driving and they make and expect you to make accommodations so both can pass in opposite directing without kissing each other’s rear view mirrors.