Cars & Motoring
Apart from the obvious fact that the two countries drive on opposite sides of the road there are a number of areas of difference regarding cars and motoring. Some of the differences are cultural, some are financial and there are ideas on both sides of the Atlantic that we think should be adopted by the other side.
Subjects in this section, which is updated every now and then, are:
Right Turn on Red
The Price of Cars
The Price of Gas / Petrol
Speed Limits
Road Signs
Right Turn on Red
What a great idea! This is something that the UK should adopt. (Well, they should have a left turn on red, but a right turn on red rule might make for an interesting spectator sport…)
For any UK readers…unless otherwise stated on signage, if you are at a red traffic light and wish to turn right you may do so as long as it is clear and you do not get in the way of any traffic with a green light. Imagine being at a red light in the UK. You want to turn left, and doing so does not require you to cross any lanes or do anything other than turn the corner. There’s no traffic from the cross-stream, but you have to wait until the light changes. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to turn the corner and continue your journey?
This law assists, in a small way, traffic flow. And given the state of traffic flow in the UK even a small bit of assistance would be welcomed. It helps that road junctions are built with this law in mind, but I can think of no real drawbacks to the rule.
Cars in the US are cheaper and bigger. At the time of writing (June 2008) various US car manufacturers are announcing cutbacks in the production of larger vehicles due to a drop in demand. Driving round Erie it is hard to see where the demand has dropped as the vast majority of vehicles on the road appear to be SUVs, large family vans or trucks. Indeed, the Ford F-150 seems to be very commonly used as a family vehicle.
We have bought two cars in the last couple of weeks. A Toyota RAV4 and a Ford Explorer.
The RAV4 replaces a Renault Scenic (common in the UK but don’t think they are available in the US) and is a similar sized car but has AWD, cruise control, traction control and many other features that the Scenic didn’t have. The RAV4 is a mid/upper range model and cost around $27,000 (approx. £13,500) on the road. It is hard to match that in UK terms exactly, because the UK range does not have similar specifications, including different engine sizes, but getting as close as we can the same car would cost around £22,000 (approx. $44,000).
The Ford Explorer replaces a Renault Megane Sport (again, not available in the US). Not a similar vehicle by any means, but the Explorer, again a mid/upper range model, cost around $27,000 (approx. £13,500) on the road. The Explorer isn’t sold in the UK any more, but when it was being sold the reviews of it compared it to the similarly priced Mitsubishi Shogun. Looking at Shoguns in the UK today none of the models come close to the 4.0 litre V6 engine in the US Explorer, and the cheapest auto version is around £26,000 (approx. $52,000).
Those UK prices are not ‘on the road’ either, but simply the cost of the vehicles before the additional charges to get them on the road are applied. So, cars in the US are cheaper. Good news if, like us, you are moving from the UK to the US, but if you are moving the other way be prepared for an expensive purchase.
As at June 2008 the price of oil on global markets is at an all time high, and this is reflected in prices at the pumps. In the US gas prices are currently around $4 (approx. £2) a gallon and rising. This is having a big impact on the US economy. Indeed, earlier this month some US car manufacturers announced reductions in production of SUV and truck vehicles and a focus on smaller, more fuel economical vehicles.
In the UK pump prices are around £5.50 (approx $11) a gallon and rising. The bulk of that price is made up of tax levied by the UK Government. Around 67% of the pump price of petrol goes to the Government in the form of a petrol duty tax and also sales tax (called Value Added Tax - VAT - and levied at 17.5%….see the page on sales tax under the Shopping category). UK consumers are continually told that, pre tax, their petrol is the cheapest in Europe, but that’s small comfort as there’s no way to avoid the tax!
So, no good news for either side of the Atlantic on fuel prices. This page may date very quickly as the global oil situation seems to be changing daily, but we can’t see any good news on the horizon.
This difference is slightly more pronounced as we moved from the Isle of Man. Why does that make a difference? Well, in the UK and Isle of Man there is a road sign (white circle with diagonal black stripe) that indicates that the National Speed Limit for that type of road is in force. The highest National Speed Limit in the UK is 70 mph, slightly higher than in the US. In the UK, when driving on motorways (equivalent to highways) you are not going to get stopped for under 80 mph and realistically, unless driving stupidly, even higher than that. In the Isle of Man there is no National Speed Limit, so where that sign is in place you may drive as fast as you like. You will still get stopped for dangerous driving or other offences, but you won’t get stopped for speeding.
Clearly those roads needed to be driven with proper due care and attention, but it was very nice to let the car stretch its legs, as it were.
As an aside, for motorbike or racing fans, the Isle of Man is home to the TT each year, which uses as the circuit over 37 miles of public roads. These roads are closed to the public during the races, of course, but the key point to note is that they are public roads for the rest of the year. The top average speed over that 37 mile lap is just over 130 mph. Over the mountain stretch, where even for the public there is no speed limit during the year, racers hit over 200 mph.
So, while in general UK speed limits are higher, and there is more tolerance for speeding drivers on National Speed Limit roads (there is zero tolerance for speeding in built-up areas, as you would expect), coming from the Isle of Man there is a far greater difference for us, especially on highways.
Where to start on this subject? Road signs in the US are all over the place, except where you are looking for them, and are often well hidden. The driver needs to spend a lot of the time looking out for road signs and this leaves less time for looking at the road and the traffic. Signs can be on posts beside the road, or on wires above the road. In some cases signs are hidden behind other signs, or difficult to see because of overhead wires or trees. Irrespective of whether the rules the signs are enforcing make full sense or not, the US driver has to spend far too much time looking up or to the right - time which would be better spent looking at the traffic flow around them.
In the UK the placement of signs is more consistent. The UK uses a lot more road markings to give clues to road rules and conditions - I’d argue that the driver should be paying attention to the road, so keeping an eye on these road markings is less of a distraction from the core task of driving safely. On the drive back from the test centre there were many junctions with two lanes, one for straight on and one for turning (sometimes left, sometimes right). There was usually no clue, as you approached, which lane was straight on and which for turning. Some arrows on the road at the last minute were quite useless if there were more than 2 cars ahead of you.
There is a very good article in the current (July/August 2008) edition of Atlantic magazine. In the article John Staddon makes a good case for the simplification of ’stop’ and speed limit road signs in the US. Why not give it a read?
