Always Look Right

One of the new (and sometimes dangerous) experiences of living in New Zealand is driving on the left-hand side of the road. For an American, this is a fun novelty that quickly wears off after you find yourself in a roundabout and invoke the road-rage of the Kiwi driver tailgating behind you. Despite this, I like driving our little Subaru (pronounced Sue-bar-roo) Justy around the South Island, even if it feels like the wind will blow us off the road sometimes. We just got our NZ driver's licenses so I thought I would include some driving related topics that often come up when on the road:

Blinkers, Windshield Wipers and Gear Sticks
Not only do you drive on the opposite side of the road, but all the car features are opposite as well. The steering wheel is on the right, so are the blinkers, which means I regularly clean my windshield instead of signalling a turn. This is super frustrating when I have a car immediately behind me (see below). And of course the gear stick is on the right so I constantly reach for thin air by the car door when I need to change gears.

Turning Left
OK, this may get confusing for you right-side drivers back home, but bare with me.
First of all, you can NEVER turn left on a red light. And on a green light you must WAIT FOR THE ONCOMING CARS TO TURN RIGHT FIRST (unless of course there are cars going straight in the lane next to you and they act as a 'block' for you to turn left). This is the most confusing rule in New Zealand driving and I have to mentally prepare myself before entering the intersection for a turn. Apparently NZ is the only country to still impose this rule, although the government plans to review this law later this year.

Tailgating & Passing
Tailgating seems to be a right here in New Zealand. Every time we are in the car we can expect to have a car immediately behind us. Often, they are so close you can see their blood pressure rise in your rear view mirror! In our teeny-tiny car I sometimes feel like they are along for the ride in the back seat. When I drive I turn the mirror down so I can't see them behind me. It's just makes me nervous and I still need to focus on driving and following the New Zealand driving rules. Driving back from Queenstown over the holidays we were tailgated by a double fuel tanker truck who eventually passed on on a blind curve. He was closely followed by a driver who didn't want to miss the action should the tanker crash and have fiery explosion. Sadly there are very few passing lanes or turnouts where slower drivers can let cars pass.

Speed Limits
This one surprised me a lot. The general speed limit in New Zealand is 100 kph/62.1 mph, although many people drive much faster. As a Californian, I'm used to high speed driving on freeways where people regularly drive over 128 kph/80 mph. For some reason I didn't expect Kiwi drivers to drive so fast, especially on dangerous roads. The very narrow road along Otago Harbor on the Peninsula is full of twists and turns without shoulders, turnouts or guardrails, but people insist on driving it like they are racing in the Formula 1. During the Winter months cars regularly skid on ice and end up in the harbor. Our small 3-cylinder car (you can laugh now) can barely sustain 100 kph, although we get fantastic gas mileage, errr, petrol kilometerage....

Roundabouts & Yields
Oh, the dreaded roundabout. Finding a roundabout in California is about as rare as spotting a kiwi bird in the wild. I think the town I grew up in had just one and I think it had stop signs. The roundabout is supposed to keep traffic flowing smoothly. Why stop if no one is coming, right? Well, Kiwis seem to have made an art out of never stopping their car and roundabouts & yields help facilitate this quite nicely. Drivers enter roundabouts as if there were no other cars on the road so you better know what you're doing and where your exiting before you enter one. Most residential or small town intersections only have Yield signs each way, which drivers may or may not heed. There is one particular intersection in Dunedin that I avoid like the plague, ebola and bird flu combined: 5 roads converge with Yields in all directions, if you ever figure out how to navigate this one, please let me know. I don't even try to cross it on foot.

Pedestrians
It took me a few weeks to get in the habit of looking right before crossing the road, and to remember that pedestrians rarely have the right away here. Only at certain crosswalks market with large orange lamps that look like balloons can a pedestrian cross the street with the comforting knowledge that oncoming traffic will stop. We regularly wave pedestrians across, only to receive a few honks from cars behind us.