Just back from the family holidays in Florida. I was dreading driving on the other side of the road.
Hired a cavernous 3.7l Durango, which costs about US$ 27k new, an astonishing equivalent of £13.5k. But in my opinion, it was not as sophisticated a drive as Japaneese or European cars. After 1200 odd miles there were loads of paint chips on the edges of doors and considering that the doors did not touch any wall or other car, I can only assume poor finish coupled with daytime heat.
Rear visibility for lane changing etc was appalling. It also achieved under 20mpg ? I know a US gallon is less than a UK gallon. Petrol was US$2.65 per gallon! (tax makes up the majority of the difference). There did seem to be many more petrol stations than we have here so perhaps their retailers make more per gallon than our retailers do.
What really hit me though was how polite other drivers were over there. Now I appreciate that tourists are a feature of the roads there, but I only got tooted at once when I failed to turn right on a red light (what a good idea). BTW it was only a short beep not one of those long blasts that you get here. I probably deserved far more than one toot, given that it was my first experience of driving on the right and all of those strange signs including flashing amber traffic lights late at night (go through with caution).
American drivers do not appear to stop on amber, which is quite nerve racking when you do and cars whiz past you on either side and the ones behind you switch lanes and keep on going. You soon learn to do as you see.
Freeways flowed smoothly and drivers tended to stick to the posted speed limits. (I was surprised to see some 70 mph limits as I though that the maximum speed was 55 mph.) The roads appeared most congested on a Sunday but even then they flowed freely. Police cruisers were a frequent sight.
There were some toll roads and the maximum toll that we paid was US$1.75 totalling about US$6 for a 150 mile round trip.
What did cause some problems was the lack of services on the freeways. Petrol and food tended to be off a junction, these were sign posted but necessitated leaving the freeway and finding a way back. Sometimes the posted services were not there!
Slip roads appeared shorter than their UK counterparts and lanes merged frequently. We do this bit better here.
Around Orlando and Kissimmee I used several urban highways, usually two lane, but some three and four lane ones. What really surprised me was that crossing the carriageways is encouraged (quite nerve-racking) with none of the roundabouts that we get here. Many entrances were T-junctions, allowing no room to speed up to join the flow of traffic. To be fair many exits had very small off slip roads. Crash barriers were not always present.
There were some major road works going on in the area that we stayed in but these were carried out at night, probably because of the stifling daytime heat as opposed to helping traffic flow. At each junction on the dual carriageway that leaded to our resort there was a worker controlling traffic and these were interspersed with big police cruisers.
A really good idea was the doubling of speeding fines when workers were present and speed sensors showing your current speed (there should have been more).
All in all, quite a pleasant experience.
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Good post. Pretty much reflects my own experience of driving in the USA.
The point about drivers not stopping on amber is worth noting for those driving in the USA for the first time.
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Concurs with my experiences too. We've also had a Durango in the past - it's actually quite a crude / basic vehicle. But driving it is so effortless we only really realised how big it was when we came out of our hotel one morning a Volvo XC90 parked next to it seemed like a toy.
One thing I liked about traffic lights (apart from the turn right on red) is they generally have long cycles - so if you see green ahead of you, you'll probably get through. Over here the lights seem to spend most of their time changing.
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>>Petrol was US$2.65 per gallon!
Cheap though it is, that has actually gone up quite a bit there then. It is only a couple of years ago, IIRC, that there was outcry on CNN about the arrival of the '2 buck gallon'.
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In Chicago it's about $2.87-$2.99 at the moment, the most expensive in the nation!
That's because we have some local laws mandating a special (i.e. more expensive mixture)
And lack of refining capacity in the Midwest
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A good idea that I've seen over there is the placing of an amber light above the road approaching a traffic light. If the traffic light is green but the amber light is flashing, then if you are at or below the speed limit, it's an indication that the light will turn red before you reach it (at least that's my understanding).
Not so good idea - the 4-way stop. Even the locals seem to be confused by it.
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A good idea that I've seen over there is the placing of an amber light above the road approaching a traffic light......
That's incorrect. It means proceed with caution. They're used (for example) at peak time only traffic lights and outside firestations.
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