Driving in Joburg is perverse. Before we acquired the car I was pretty fearful of driving on the left hand side. While studying abroad in England my friend Kristian was kind enough to cart me and our friends around. Every time he made a right turn I would take a panicky sharp breath, my stomach flipped, and my brain would scream, "YOU'RE GOING TO KILL US!!" After months of being conditioned to riding on the left of the road this reaction never fully went away. So being here and knowing that driving is a necessity (Joburg is the size of Los Angeles and buses are a death wish even Charles Bronson would shy away from) I was deeply afraid of making a turn and having my driving instincts take over, leading us into oncoming traffic.
Luckily for Kris, myself, and the people of Joburg, I took to driving on the wrong side of the road right away. The only problems have been a tendency to drift to the left side of the lane a bit and reaching for a three-in-the-tree shifter when I know it's in the middle. The real challenges are more structural, like roads changing names every few blocks, and illegible street signs, if there are street signs at all. Also, traffic laws, driving etiquette, and attentiveness to what you're doing do not seem to have taken hold here. The flip side of that coin is that if your fellow driver thinks you're driving too slow/stupidly, they almost never honk, flip the bird, or engage in some of the antagonistic driving behavior common back home.
So far I like driving. The city reminds me a great deal of Los Angeles: palm trees, hilly, sunny, 60 degree weather necessitates down jackets, and pedestrians are an oddity.
Kris and our valet Bryn
An American car for the Americans. I bet someone at Avis thinks they're pretty clever.
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