Brittish Motorcycle Safety - 1960's Style

[fredintoon]

A bit of Brit trivia...ofc they/Brits will probably know the origin of the left side driving, but perhaps many of us YANKS might NOT know....so here it is!

It started during the Midieval period when folks...specifically KNIGHTS were on horseback. Folks were ALL right handed since being LEFT handed was would have made you in the DEVIL's legion! It's tough to shake right hands ACROSS your horse and waiste to the left side, so riding up on the left side, right hand to right hand permitted easy handshaking and such!

An aside story....military saluting came from the action of the KNIGHTS raising their VISORS to show their eyes.
T.C.

Hi TC,
what we were taught in school was that Brits rode on the left, sword arm to sword arm, to better fight an oncoming enemy.
OTOH the cowardly French rode on the right, shield arm to shield arm, to better avoid the oncoming enemy's sword.

[b.walker5]

Hi TC,
what we were taught in school was that Brits rode on the left, sword arm to sword arm, to better fight an oncoming enemy.
OTOH the cowardly French rode on the right, shield arm to shield arm, to better avoid the oncoming enemy's sword.

That's the history I was taught too..

[DGXSER]

See and here I figured that down in NZ and Aussie land you drove on the opposite side from us due to the equator shift.

Kind of like the drain swirling backwards.

[cywelchjr]

Hi TC,
what we were taught in school was that Brits rode on the left, sword arm to sword arm, to better fight an oncoming enemy.
OTOH the cowardly French rode on the right, shield arm to shield arm, to better avoid the oncoming enemy's sword.

I was always taught that it had to do with the weapon of choice at the time of driving habits being formed for the country in large part, as the U.S. was pretty much formed after the advent of the pistol which works best from right to left rather than left to right like a sword.

[DGXSER]

So then, why are railroad tracks at the distance they are apart?

[robbo]

I think you use the same gauge for railway tracks in the US as the UK which is called standard gauge 4' 8 1/2" and was the gauge set out by George Stephenson the grand daddy of the stream train.

[DGXSER]

Yes, but why did they settle on that distance?.............

[cywelchjr]

IIRC it had to do with that being adopted by the major railroads to lower cost of building rolling stock, and quickly became the standard because they all wanted to be able to connect their rails to each other so that a train could go longer distances without having to unload everything and put it on another train at each change to another rail line.

I suspect them being the same on both sides of the pond has to do with the fact that we sold a LOT of steam locomotives to england and europe as well.

Even know there is still a good bit of non-standard stuff out there, but it's usually narrow guage stuff because of clearance issues on the right of way for the rails. Anything narrower than standard guage as I understand loses a lot of stability and carrying capacity and anything large doesn't really gain much but takes more land, and the railroads have to own the land they travel on, unlike any other form of transportation.

[DGXSER]

My understanding is that when they first started the railroad, they werepulling the carts down the track with horses and long story short (cause I do not recall it) the tracks are just the width of two horses azzes to match up with the wheels on a cart. Or somethign along those lines.

[robbo]

Horses ass's do have a lot to do with it, in the fact that the wheels on a Roman chariot were 4' 8" apart because that was the right width for two horses to fit side by side, so this became the standard gauge for cartmakers as the wheels needed to fit the ruts in the road made by the romans. So moving on a few hundred years when Stephenson started to experiment with railways his rolling stock was adpated from horse drawn carts, and as it was British engineers who first started to build American railroads this gauge was transfered across the pond.