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Driving in England: How to drive a car in England

The worry about driving in England (on the ‘other side of the road’) can spoil the run-up to even the most exciting vacation or business trip. But you needn’t stress: it’s easy and millions of overseas visitors manage easy motoring every year. Having your own vehicle in England is wonderful - you are completely free to see England's wonderful countryside and vibrant towns. A car is a fabulous way to see the country and these tips will ease the worry about driving in the England.

Your licence is good to drive on

Firstly, if you’re allowed to drive in your own country, and your licence is full and valid all the time you’re trying to use it in the UK, you can drive here. You don’t need a special international licence, or to take any extra tests.

Drive on the left

Yes, drive on the left. It sounds terrifying, doesn't it? But the odd thing is that which worries many overseas visitors the most is the thing that is actually easiest to get used to. Yes there are differences:The steering wheel is on the right of the car, not the left, and so you change gear with your left hand. The traffic moves on the left of the roads; the left lane in freeways (motorways) is for slow vehicles. But there are many similarities to help you too: Inside the car, all your other controls are in exactly the same place as at home. The traffic signs are where you would expect, and where there are differences your brain adjusts almost immediately to the new situation.

However, you can help yourself by running through a few checks once you get to England:

Take a few minutes to get used to everything in the car rental lot
Turning right is the ‘difficult’ turn as you must cross the lane of oncoming traffic. You do this in the same way as turning left at home
Write a note to yourself reminding yourself to drive on the left
Leaving parking lots is one of the easiest places to forget to drive on the left - be especially wary there
If in doubt, follow what other cars are doing! Watch and follow – it’s how humans learn best.
They also drive on the left in Ireland, if you’re heading that way after visiting England or Scotland, so all these same tips apply!

Consider getting a GPS

Knowing where you are supposed to be going and finding out where you are can be incredibly difficult for someone used to the block system; in England, towns, villages and cities were planned and built hundreds and sometimes thousands of years ago and they’ve grown up organically. While undoubtedly part of the charm of Europe, this is not exactly convenient for the motorist - and so I’d heartily recommend buying or hiring a Satellite Navigation system if you’re planning to drive in the UK. At their most basic, they cost as little as £50 ($70) to buy, which is cheaper than the hire cost over a week. This is especially important because most rental cars in the UK and Europe do NOT come with GPS units in them already. tomtom

You can usually upgrade existing units by buying different country maps, so you can have one unit for use at home which (with a Europe map) will also work overseas. If at any stage you need to ask for directions, pubs are universally used as a landmark so you might end up with an answer like “go left at the King’s head, go straight for half a mile and then go right at the Casterbridge Arms.” Note too that there are often similar sounding streets near to one another.. again, all part of the charm of Europe!

If you're really stuck you can get paper maps in gas stations - they cost just a few pounds. But a GPS eliminates most of the worry about where you're going - leaving you free to concentrate on how you're driving, not where.

Make sure you get the best deal on car rental in England

Ok, not essential, but just common-sense. Prices vary far more widely than you'd think and you need to shop around. By far the best idea is to point your browser over to rentalcars.com and use their handy price comparison site - you plug your details in and they come back with prices from all the major operators, which makes it far easier to shop around.

All UK car hire includes the insurance you need to legally drive the vehicle, but if you have an accident or a scrape you may be forced to pay an excess. As such the company will offer you Collision Damage Waiver (CDW) when your pick up your car or before. Make sure you work out if this will be good value for you because it’s often very expensive, and the salespeople are often on commission to try and get you to buy it even if you don't really need it. As always, make sure you examine the car properly when you pick it up and note any damage; be sure too to check if you need to return it full or empty.

There are traffic circles/rotaries – which in the UK are called roundabouts

Oh yes. Round circles of concrete in the middle of the road. Often with flowers and trees growing on them?! Are they trying to kill people?! No. Welcome to the roundabout, a wonderful piece of traffic engineering invented in the UK. Although roundabouts are gradually encroaching into some US states, many North American drivers will have only the vaguest clue what they are and how to deal with them. Don't worry; they're not as terrifying as they seem. Essentially, they just take the place of a four way junction.

OK... So how do I use a roundabout?

Don't panic. It's actually quite easy.

Be prepared. As you drive up to the roundabout, you’ll see a sign showing you the shape of the roundabout, where the exits are, and where each exit goes. Take a mental note of which exit you want.
Choose a lane. As you get closer, move in to the right hand lane if the exit is the furthest to the right. Otherwise, stick to the left lane.
Check if you can enter. Once you get to the roundabout’s entrance, check if it’s clear to enter. The basic rule is ALWAYS traffic on the roundabout has priority. Traffic coming towards you will always be to your right.
Go Clockwise. Once it’s clear, you go round roundabouts clockwise. You're driving on the left remember, so this will seem logical. See the picture.
Indicate just before your exit. On the roundabout, indicate before you want to exit. Make sure it’s safe to exit, and then do so.

Voila! You’re on the road you need to be on. If this all sounds complicated, don’t worry – you get the hang of it very, very quickly. Roundabouts are statistically many, many times safer than a simple crossroads.

The cars are different

As befits a country without a lot of space (the whole of the UK is slightly larger than a pink smartcar in london Idaho) cars here are smaller than North Americans will be used to. Most are around the sized of a sub-compact car – a Honda Civic perhaps. There are very few cars as big as an SUV. The brands here are different too: there are many Japanese and European cars (renault, BMW, Citroen, Volkswagen) and not so many US cars (Ford is the exception). Many US brands (e.g. Chevrolet) simply aren’t here at all.

There are also crazily-small cars you may never have seen like the Citeron 2CV, the Smartcar and the Robin Reliant. There are separate orange turn-signal lights on the cars, which blink on and off when you have the indicator on. Unlike in the US, cars will never lock themselves, so you’ll have to make sure the doors are locked when you’re driving if that’s important to you.

Note too that almost all cars here are stick shift, not automatic. If you want automatic you’ll need to tell your rental agency – and be prepared to pay a premium for it.

Roads in the UK are narrow

empty-country-road You’ve probably heard at some time the Beatles song the ‘Long and Winding Road’ (the combination of Paul at his most maudlin and Spector at his most excessive make it perhaps the most deeply unsatisfactory Beatles song of all, though that’s slightly beside the point). The essential truth of the song though – which was allegedly written about a road in Scotland matching the title of the tune – is that many, many roads in the UK are both long and winding and narrow to boot. Indeed, the combination of narrowness and windy-ness is enough to test the nerves of any overseas driver; if you’re carrying a particularly nervous passenger it’s probably best to ask them not to say anything about ‘how close to the wall you’re getting’ or ‘how near to the hedge you are.’ In extremis a quick reminder that the merest flick of the wheel by you would crash the car on their side usually makes them silent, if only in anger.

But it’s certainly good to know in advance that lanes and roads can be narrow, particularly on country roads. And even though these roads were originally probably built for carts, or to drive sheep along, and certainly many centuries before the car was invented, there is enough room for modern vehicles. The trick is to keep your wits about you and your eye on the road ahead of you, rather than worrying about how close you are to the objects you're passing – it’s easy to overcorrect and drift into the oncoming lane slightly.

In very, very rural areas you may come across single-track roads. Often you won’t be able to see anything at all except what’s right ahead of you - because not only do they wind unexpectedly this way and that but they’re also often surrounded by high hedges, trees or stone walls.

The speed limit on many of these roads is technically 60mph, though you’d have to have a particularly strident death-wish to go at that speed. Sticking to 20mph is a more sensible idea and if you do meet a car coming the other way, one of you will back up to the nearest pullout – usually whoever’s nearest. There aren’t that many of these roads in the UK, and the reason that they’re single-track at all is because they aren’t very well-used, but they can throw you if you’re not expecting them.

You can’t turn on a red

Period. If the light’s red, even if you only want to turn left, you have to just stay there till the light’s changed. Irritating, yes - but it’s the law. You may also struggle to see traffic lights/signals at all. Very few hang overhead as in north America – most are just on posts out of the ground. Keep an eye out.
Otherwise, traffic lights are relatively simple. As in most countries, Green means ‘go’! Sometimes the lights are slightly more complicated because it’s a green arrow, not just a single green bulb. The green arrow simply means that if you want to go in the direction the arrow is facing (usually straight ahead) then you can go; if you’re waiting to go in a different direction (e.g. to make a right turn) you have to wait until that relevant green light illuminates as well.

Don’t rent a car in Central London

The only good thing to be said for driving in central London is that is mildly less terrifying than being the passenger in a car which is driving through central London. Driving in Central London is horrendous even for anyone who’s spent years driving in the UK: any sense of common courtesy between drivers dies as soon as you pass the circular motorway around London (the M25 – kind of like Washington DC’s beltway) and is replaced by selfishness and glee in making life as uncomfortable as possible for your fellow road-users.

Public transport in London is very good, so take the tube or the bus instead. If you need to drive in London, try and do it at the end of your trip, when you’ve had a chance to acclimatise on less frenetic British roads. The only real exception here is if you hire a car at a London airport and drive away from the capital – then you quickly get to more ‘normal’ roads with more courteous drivers.

The other point to note is that, from a purely financial perspective, it's much more expensive to drive in Central London as well. On weekdays, drivers have to pay an £8 fee to drive in most parts of central London, in a bid to stop commuters from driving in and clogging up the roads. If you fail to pay - and there are enforcement cameras everywhere which automatically read your licence plate - then you can expect a bill of between £60 and £180, plus whatever outrageous premium your car hire firm add on for 'processing' the fine. You can pay the cost of the congestion charge itself on a cellphone or at a newsagents.

On a related note, parking in London is also incredibly expensive, up to £10 an hour in some parts of the centre. There are often complicated rules and regulations as well; make sure you read all notices near your parking spot carefully.

The law: Speed

The standard speed limit in England is 30mph. It’s probably safest to assume this is 40mph-sign the speed limit unless you’re on a motorway (freeway) or you know for sure otherwise – by seeing a sign. If you have a queue of irate drivers behind you pumping their car horns angrily at you, most likely you’re going too slowly.
Other roads have their own individual limits – the most popular out of town limit is 50mph. There are frequent signs.

The speed limit for a motorway (which is the same as a expressway/freeway) is 70 miles and hour – you’ll need to remember this as there are no signs once you’re on one. You can tell it’s an motorway because the name of the road will start with an M (e.g. the M1, which goes from London to the North of England). Keep an eye out for speed cameras. Pernicious little things: there are usually signs to warn you of them but if you are caught speeding then you'll be looking at a £60 minimum fine as well as whatever extra charges the hire company care to add on.

It's also the law that you'll need insurance to drive. If you’re bringing a car from continental Europe you may need to organise this yourself; rental cars include this automatically.
Driving while using a cell phone is illegal. You’ll be fined £60 if you’re caught.
If you see a single yellow line on the kerb, you can only park there during certain times – check the sign nearby. If you see a double yellow line on the road – don’t park there at all – you’re likely to get ticketed or towed.

Distances & Measurements

Europe is a metric-loving place; they invented the meter in France after all and metric all seems much more sensible to Europeans than Imperial measurements.

Britain though prides itself on being a crossroads between Europe and America and this means that some measurements are Metric, some remain Imperial. This is good news for North American visitors as at least part of the system will make some sense.

The good news is that road distances are measured in miles and speed in miles per hour. Sometimes shorter distances are sometimes talked of in yards, feet and inches but more often (especially by younger people) in metres and centimetres. There is no consistency in the way measurements are talked of, which is either charmingly idiosyncratic or intensely annoying, depending on your point of view.

You could do worse than to remember the rhyme my mother taught me:

A metre is about three foot three // it’s bigger than a yard you see.
Two and a half pounds of jam // weigh about a kilo-gram.

To the driver, this impacts you most noticeably at the pump. Gas is called petrol in England and petrol is sold in litres - so don’t be fooled into thinking it’s much cheaper than in America. In fact petrol is horrendously expensive, probably twice the price as in the USA. It’s best not to think about it too much. 4 liters at the petrol pump is about 1 US gallon.

The weather

Temperatures are also metric, though sometimes the helpful TV weather forecasters give Fahrenheit equivalents, mainly for older viewers. 32F is 0 degrees Celsius; 100F is about 40 degrees Celsius though it would be extraordinary if the mercury on the thermometer got anywhere near that at any time of year in the UK. The network news would go mental (i.e. become very excited) if it did.

You’ll need to check if your rental car comes with air-conditioning if you really want it. Bearing in mind that it hardly ever gets hot in the UK, the only months you’d consider this would be for late May, June, July and August; the rest of the year it’s an extra you can do without as you simply won’t be needing it.

Most Europeans drive manual cars, mainly because fuel economy is better and smaller engine sizes are more efficient; if you don’t want a manual then you’d better make sure you make your rental an automatic. Manuals are fun to drive on the empty roads of Scotland or East Anglia, but they’re an absolute pain in London, Birmingham or any other big city where you’re going to be in nose to tail traffic.

Signage and road signs

The good news is that European signs are largely standardised so that if you’ve ever driven in one European country you’ll soon pick it up in the next; the bad news is that the standard is totally different to that of the US. Rather than being word-based, it’s symbol based. Happily though, the concepts are largely similar, so it’s basically just a question of translating what you already know rather than reinventing the wheel.

**British Road signs and what they mean**
	No entry. You can't go down this road, ever. Or at least you can't enter it in that direction.
	Give way - the English 'yield' sign. But in England you only have to come to a complete stop if there's traffic around. You can sail on through the junction if it's safe to do so.
	One way street. You can only go down this street in one direction. Good news is: if you can see the sign, you're going down it the right way.
	No stopping. Used on fast roads. You can't stop the car here at all. You also can't stop ever on a motorway.
	Roundabout ahead. There's a roundabout ahead. Shortly after this sign there'll be another with the shape of that particular roundabout on it.

Filling up – petrol stations

expensive-gas All petrol stations in the UK are fully self-service. You either:

fuel-up and then pay in person at the forecourt office or, increasingly, put in a credit card and then you’ll be allowed to fuel until, say £70. Unlike in some US states you never pay for the petrol first and then fill-up. It’s easy to forget and drive off without paying if you’re not careful. Don't do this as being arrested is always a dreadful hassle on a vacation.

Most cars in the UK take unleaded fuel; there are different grades available as in the US, with promises of better engine performance if you pay more etc etc. Whatever your views on these (frankly dubious) claims at home, in a rental car I’d always just fill up with the cheapest fuel available. This will usually be called ‘97’ and be labelled simply: Unleaded (rather than ‘Premium Unleaded’ or ‘Super Unleaded’). Unleaded handles are almost always green.

There are also diesel cars in the UK and therefore diesel pumps. You can’t accidentally fill an unleaded car with diesel as the pumps are the wrong shape. But if you’re driving a diesel rental car you CAN get it wrong the other way round and put unleaded in a diesel car – with disastrous consequences as it’s very expensive to fix (you need to strip and clean the whole engine) and this is often specifically excluded from car rental insurance. Diesel handles are usually black.

All petrol stations will take the big credit cards though remember your bank will charge you a fee for each transaction you make in the UK so it’s probably better to pay cash if you have it.

Some petrol stations will have free water and air for tyres; you may have to pay a small 20p charge for this. Some stations, particularly in rural areas have small toilets in them which can be very handy. Shell stations are usually good for this.

Having an accident

Obviously it’s not a brilliant idea, but you should know what to do if you do have an accident. If it’s just a minor bump and no-one’s injured, just swap your name, address and hire car details with the other party. Don’t admit liability. If someone’s hurt then the police may be called to investigate what happened, but otherwise it will just be a case of swapping your details. Obviously all you can do if the police are called at this stage is cooperate with them fully - they are honest and fair.

If you’re hurt – in the car or at any part of your trip – then you may be taken to hospital. All emergency treatment is free for overseas nationals, but if you’re from outside the EU after that you’ll have to pay, so it makes sense to have a travel insurance policy in place. UK healthcare is world-class, despite occasional horror stories.

Driving in England: Final thoughts

Finally, I’ll go back to what I said at the beginning – driving a car in England is much more of a worry before you go. Once you get here, you’ll pick it up quickly – millions do. And watch the other cars for help!

Have fun driving, and remember to shop around for the best deal on your car hire!