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When did Russia start to drive on the right, and why?
Since it is advantageous for a right handed person to ride his horse on the left hand side of the highway, the left hand rule of the road was almost universal until the Jacobins in France in the 1790s decided to impose the maritime rule of passing port to port on land transport for the mere sake of uniformity. Bonaparte, Hitler, Mussolini and Chang Kai Check imposed the French rule on the places they ruled or conquered. But why ever should czarist Russia have adopted a French idea?
2 Answers
- cymry3jonesLv 71 decade ago
They were POSH. Port side out, starboard side home. In Tsarist Russia French was not just the diplomatic language, but also the court language. Tolstoy's 'War and Peace' was criticised for having too many words and that too many of them were French.
Strangely, in present day eastern Russia, although they drive on the right, many cars are right hand drive. This is apparently because the Japanese drive on the left and the Russians in that neck of the woods import second hand cars from Japan.
When I was in Siberia I was told that it is illegal to drive a car which is more than 4 years old in Japan, which means that there is a good trade in relatively new second hand cars.
I have never researched the truth of this statement, so don't shoot the messenger.
