Driving on right hand side

pollyanna24

I am going to Rhodes and am thinking of hiring a car.

1. Do I have to do anything so I can legally drive over there? I have a phocard licence.

2. How hard is it to drive on the other side of the road? I'm thinking Rhodes is a quiet as opposed to England, but there is the added thing of changing gear with the other hand.

I. A fairly confident driver. Happy enough to drive on m1 and m25, but only once have driven in London and that was a Sunday.

Swipe

It's dead easy, it'll just come naturally.

Aretnap

Your UK licence is avid throughout the EU and there is nothing special you need to do to drive legally in Greece. To hire the car you may need to get a DVLA code in case the hire company wants to check your driving history (they may well not, but better to have it just in case they do) - See here.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/hiring-a-vehicle

I've never found a left hand drive car to be a problem. Takes about two minutes to get used to the fact that the gear lever is on the wrong side of the car, after which everything feels natural. Roundabouts take a little bit of getting used to - slow down as you approach them and remind yourself that you have to drive the wrong way round them. Beyond that it's just the locals you have to worry about - as one guidebook warned me, Greece is a good place to practice your defensive driving skills!

WellKnownSid

You'll keep getting in the wrong side of the car for the first couple of days.

Watch pulling out of junctions / petrol stations / etc where there are no clear road markings. Quiet / little traffic makes it easier to pull out on to the wrong side and stay there.

Gear changing will the fine. Your feet may get disorientated as they're the things that don't change!

Don't drive tired i.e. Picking the car up at 3am after a very delayed flight.

Sat navs and accompanying passengers can both help to remind you.

FreddieFrugal

I drove about 1000 miles over 2 weeks in Slovenia, Italy and Austria which was the first time I'd driven abroad and in hire car.

The first drive I did felt weird but after that it felt like I'd always driven that way. Felt weird when I came home and had to drive on the left. Grabbed for gear stick in side door bin on way back from the airport.

You pick it up quickly and should become instinctual.

Also drove in Cyprus this year but that was just like driving in UK

splishsplash

I'm a very confident driver but it takes me ages to get used to driving on the right. For a start I keep hopping into the front passenger seat, then scrabble for the gear stick with my right hand, I find it really hard to gauge where the left side of the car was and don't get me started on lights/wipers/indicators etc.

It usually takes me about a day and a half to get halfway used to it.

Just take it nice and slowly and get your passengers to shout out if you're too close/far to other things.

Moto2

Top tip:

If you're driving on a quiet road and you see a car coming towards you on the wrong side of the road, it's probably you.

brat

I've driven in Crete Rhodes Lesvos, Corfu and around Turkey.

Rhodes was fairly straightforward. We holidayed in Afandou, near Faliraki, and travelled around the island, to Lindos, Prasonisi, Ixia, Petaloudes etc. Rhodes Town was busiest, but it wasn't difficult to drive through or park, although it was 10 years ago.

Road warning signage is not as good as in the UK. But, being a religious bunch, the Greeks put little shrines at the roadside where a relative died in a road traffic collision. We used to assess the severity of bends by the number of shrines on the apex. One in Lesvos was a five shrine bend, and you could see why.

One thing we noticed was that on three or four occasions (in Crete) drivers overtook us then immediately emergency braked, clearly to try to cause us to rear end them. We judged that they would try this on holidaymakers in hire cars so that they could claim for damage and injury.

But it's an experience everyone should try. It's fun and it really isn't difficult, it's probably easier than driving a RHD car on the right.

C_Mababejive

Remember in Greece, the roundabouts are weird. If you are already on the roundabout you MUST stop to let other people join from the link roads. They will expect you to stop and so they will just breeze onto it.

davetrousers

Remember that the pedals are also reversed, so the accelerator is on the left (foot) and the clutch on the right.

ariba10

As Moto2 said you will find that empty or nearly empty roads are the ones that you have to be extra carefull on.