Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Driving in IE

Although there were a couple occasions where I (or Molly or Lauren) had to remind myself (quickly) that I should be driving on the left not the right (made all the more complicated by the manual gear shift on the left), I'm proud to say we returned our trusty Opel Corsa back to Irish Car Rentals in one piece with no damage whatsoever. Hurray! And despite the occasional fear expressed (or politely held back, though the grimace, gasp, arms thrown out to the sides as if to grab onto something, or imaginary foot-on-the-brake kind of gave it away), we all managed to survive my driving on the other side of the road (or "wrong side" as some might say).
IEDay6_0064
(Side note: My modest pride at this accomplishment increased when I read the log upon returning the car where there were pages and pages of cars that had recently been returned with extensive damage. Strangely enough, damage was mostly on the left side of the vehicles, which doesn't make sense to me considering you drive on the left...Anyone have a theory on that one?)

4 comments:

Molly W. said...

I think you did a great job. I know I contributed to the gasps and freak outs but still, you did just great! :) And hooray for no damages! (glad we paid a million dollars for that insurance!)

Liz said...

You are SO much braver than I am! I wonder if the left side damage is from people who are totally thrown off from driving on the 'wrong' side that they get too close to the sides of the roads and start to hit things.

Lauren said...

Thank you SO much for doing all the driving. If I had driven, there would certainly have been some damage to our little Opel (and possibly to US). You did GREAT. Sorry for the occasional gasps :)

L

The Shape said...

The reason for the damage on the left is because people who drive on the right are not use to having the rest of the car on their left hand side so tend to mount the curb and scrape and wall and so on...I think that's it anyway.