So I travel a lot, and the other day I was getting out of my rental car...

Yes, I'm still getting used to not pulling the keys out of my pocket every time I approach the car.

In your case, the Corolla was probably just similar enough to the Prius to make it familiar and so you thought that it had the SKS.

Could be worse:

My GF owns an Avalon and I drive it a lot on weekends so the controls are very familiar to me. We went on vacation in New Zealand in 2004 and rented a Toyota Corolla (which is not the same as a US version Corolla) In NZ, all the cars are right hand drive and you drive on the left. No problem. The controls on the NZ Corolla are almost the same as the US Avalon, except the turn signal switch is on the opposite side of the steering column. Which meant that every time I tried to signal a turn, I ended up turning on the wipers instead. :angry:

 

lol: I felt the same way when I spent a year and a bit in Illinois

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Wakdos @ Nov 2 2007, 03:29 PM) [snapback]534108[/snapback]</div>

Could be worse:

At one of my former employers, we had a woman engineer from the UK visit on an exchange program to work in California for a year assignment. On her first day, she was turning into the entrance to the parking lot, looked the wrong direction for oncoming traffic and drove her rental car head on into another car. Luckily, no one was hurt, but I don't think that she ever got over the embarrassment.

At least I didn't crash the car in NZ.

Although I did make a guy extremely angry when I failed to "Give Way" when he was turning right . That is the strangest traffic rule ever.

 

I found Paris very confusing, the trains which we used to get around Paris run on the left side of the track system while the on the roads the French drive on the left. Being from a drive on the left this was hard to come to terms with even walking, it is surprising how the curb drill is so hard to do in reverse. I didn't even think about the affect of the trains running on the left but it would have added to the confusion. Look right for approaching trains and left for approaching cars.

Dogfriend can you explain the strange traffic rule please?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(patsparks @ Nov 2 2007, 05:44 PM) [snapback]534160[/snapback]</div>

In New Zealand, they have a rule "Give Way to Right" (or something to that effect). If I understand correctly (I didn't at first), if you are turning to the left (and of course you are driving on the left) you must yield to any traffic which is traveling in the opposite direction and wishes to turn to the right (onto the same road you are attempting to turn onto). So, even though the car turning to the right must cross lane(s) of oncoming traffic, they have the right of way.

In the US, the rule is exactly the opposite, the driver turning (from the right side) to the right has the right of way and any traffic turning left must wait until it is safe. This makes sense to me, because when you turn to the right, you are not crossing any other lanes which travel in the other direction and you can complete the turn without any negotiation with any oncoming traffic.

 

In Australia you must give way to a vehicle turning right if you are turning left in a slip lane.

By patsparks at 2007-11-02
Here you can see that if there is no slip lane right turn must give way to left turning car but when there is a slip lane you are entering the road after the point the person who turned right there fore you must give way to the car which has turned right into the road at the intersection. (give way to the right)
Yep, you are right, the Kiwis do it a little differently;

From the Kiwi road code
What are the give way rules?
If you are going straight ahead at an intersection, give way to all vehicles coming straight through from your right.
If you are turning at an intersection, give way to all vehicles not turning.
If you are turning left at an intersection, give way to vehicles coming towards you that are turning right.
If you are turning right at an intersection, give way to vehicles on your right that are turning right.
If you are leaving the path of a marked centre line, you are turning. You must give way to vehicles that are following the centre line.

I guess this gets cars out of the middle of the road which is a dangerous place to be.

 

Luckily, there aren't that many cars in NZ. We drove for hours and would only see a handful of other cars on the South Island. So, I only managed to violate the traffic laws one time.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dogfriend @ Nov 3 2007, 12:55 PM) [snapback]534203[/snapback]</div>

You weren't trying hard enough!!

 

Hopefully someday I will get the opportunity to violate Australian traffic laws. We would like to visit Australia too.

 

You will be most welcome, just when you do come here don't do what most do by hanging around Melbourne Sydney and Brisvagas. Head out west of the great dividing range and see some of the outback away from the city lights, electricity and running water. Out the back of Burke, even better.

You haven't seen all the stars until you see them in the Australian outback!!

 

NZ talks about eliminating the give-way rule from time to time, but so far hasn't done so.

My observation is that Kiwis don't use their turn signals ("indicators") any better than anyone else, but it's critical for the give-way rule. Lots of intersections don't have dedicated right turn bays. You're turning left, so you indicate and start to go into the turn. A car from the opposite direction suddenly turns to his right without indicating, cutting you off. He honks at you for not giving way to him (if you're lucky), or you run into him.

 

I'll watch out if I'm over there.
I am in Adelaide, the city with Australia's worst drivers so I should be pretty ready for NZ

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(patsparks @ Nov 3 2007, 04:16 PM) [snapback]534199[/snapback]</div>

You left off of your list the one that people have the most trouble with (all the others in your list are easy peasy). The one Dogfriend is referring to is as follows:

If you are turning right, you have right of way over someone else turning right from the opposite direction.
so if you are "b" in the example below and want to turn right, you have right of way to turn in front of driver a, UNLESS someone someone is coming up behind "a" planning on going straight through the intersection, in which case "A" will go ahead and turn while you wait.
...|........|
...|........|
__|......a|____

__ ........ _____
...| b.....|
...|........|
...|........|

 

Why can't both turn right at the same time?

By patsparks at 2007-11-03

 

The issue in NZ is that cars turning left have to give way (yield) to cars turning right. I'll defer to someone actually from there, but that's my understanding anyway. If both are turning right, they can just turn past each other.

To express it in North American terms, it would be like cars turning left into a side street or driveway having the right of way over cars turning right. As I mentioned, it really sucks when the person who technically has the right of way doesn't signal so you don't know that you're supposed to yield to him.

 

Yeah, sorry for my typo pat.
In my diagram, "a" is turning left,
"b" is turning right.

The wording of the rule is "you must give way to all right-turning vehicles coming from your right"

and "If you are turning left at an intersection, give way to vehicles coming towards you that are turning right"

So if you are the blue car in this example, you have to wait for the red truck.

[attachmentid=12313]

In practice though if there is someone coming up behind you who is going straight through,
you had better make your turn since they will shoot around you and into the intersection,
and the red truck will give way to them. All this makes for nervous fun at intersections and
no one takes the rules for granted...

Note that by extension, the rule means that the red car coming out of the driveway
has right of way in this example...
[attachmentid=12314]
because "you must give way to all right-turning vehicles coming from your right"

 

If we used the analogous rules here in California, there would be some spectacular crashes. :lol:

One aspect that you mentioned:

If someone is behind you, and you want to turn left, but you must first decide whether an oncoming vehicle is turning right in front of you or continuing straight ahead before you can make your turn.

That could never work in LA (or even Sacramento) traffic. There would be massive pileups.