Why Americans Drive on the Right, (Paperback)

<b>Every day, billions of people climb into a car and pull out into traffic - automatically, without thinking, on whichever side of the road their country has always used. But which side, and why, is one of the most revealing questions in modern history.</b> <p>Why do Americans drive on the right while the British drive on the left? Why does the left-hand world map almost perfectly onto the former British Empire, and the right-hand world onto the reach of Napoleon's conquests? And why, centuries after the decisions were made, is the world still living with them? </p><p>This book tells the full story of the world's most invisible divide. It begins with Roman soldiers marching in armed groups on the roads of a vast empire, and moves through medieval knights, French revolutionaries, American teamsters, and a small Scandinavian country that switched sides overnight in 1967 - with military precision and a brief, paradoxical drop in accident rates. Along the way it asks what the side of the road a country drives on reveals about that country's history, its geography, and the forces that shaped it. </p><p>Drawing on two thousand years of history across four continents, and told with the narrative drive of the best popular history, Why Americans Drive on the Right is a book about how decisions get made - and how, more often than not, they simply persist. Outlasting the people who made them, the reasons those people had, and sometimes the civilizations they belonged to. </p><p>History hides in plain sight. On every road in the world, it is hiding in which lane you are in.</p>

• Why Americans Drive on the Right, (Paperback)
• Author: Leo Miller
• ISBN: 9798181771925
• Format: Paperback
• Publication Date: 2026-06-15
• Page Count: 44