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Is Left Right?
The horses in the Duch de Coeur had to be retrained recently to learn new routes around Languedoc, which previously carried most of the traffic that moved between regions. This brought backmemories of comments heard over the past 5 years that the carriages have been used. Out of 75,000 carriage trips by thousands of individuals, only 4 people have commented about the carriages driving on the left hand side of the road. Three of these people were French and wanted to clarify that France does NOT drive on the 'wrong' side of the road like the British.
As far back as the ancient Greeks and Romans, traffic in most parts of the world kept to the left. Even in the new colonies in North America, trafficalso stayed tothe left. This went beyond custom insome places. Driving on the left was the law in Rome as of 1300 and in 1756 on theLondon Bridge. Most people are right handedso it makes sense to stay to the left for right-handed greetings and self-defense (e.g. swords)in on-coming traffic.Most people are also more aware of threats coming from their right rather than their left, so dangers from on-coming traffic coming too close can be handled more readily. So it appears that the British (and one third of the current world)have it right and the rest ofthe world has it wrong.
Learn about the "turning point" in traffic direction at the Duch de Coeur site!
hooray for driving on the left!! :D
Thank you for this fascinating bit of trivia, Bedrich. ( ;
Usually I just trust the horses to get it right as I know they're a smart bunch.
While they trot along I'm usually gawking at the scenery not noticing what side of the road we are on!
Great to know the history behind their smooth moves
There are those times when the horses stop in front of an on-coming horse and politely say "aprs vous", to which the other horse replies "non, aprs vous!". This can go on for days! The driver should just politely tap the horse and say "Continue", running down whatever is in the way.
It is an interesting bit of trivia, and those in North America may indeed be under the impression that France drives on the left, so I understand their point.Most of us don't watch Frenchtelevision showsnearly as muchas British TV and there may be the assumption that everyone in Europe drives like the British. I drove there while researching the concepts for the duchy about 6 years ago and found that there are few differences between France and say Quebec (except for the stop signs thatread Stop in France and Arrt in Quebec).
Being Canadian, there's just no way I'm going to be "running down whatever is in the way"!!! I'm just going to make sure I have a good lunch packed and I'll wait it out
Also, living 10 minutes for the Quebec border I'm well aware that they insist on using Arrt. Go figure, especially since stopper is actually listed in the Bescherelle. And don't get me started on using stationnement instead of parking or fin de semaine instead of weekend !!