Their mind would really be blown in southern Spain where you have both. Pedestrian areas that you actually can drive through. Caveat, speed limit is literally walking pace.
@@Tripped11 We just opened up a street to cars. It was only pedestrians before, and worker trucks and stuff. Speed limit is actually slower than walking pace hahaha. Everyone hates it.
@@Tripped11 We have those in Germany too, I even live in one. The sign is a large blue square, impossible to miss. What it means is every participant in these streets has equal rights of priority, though right before left still applies.
This is about NO SIGNS at all. That is where normal traffic rules apply. So coming from the right means you get priority with any form of transport except shoes. Even a toddler on a tricycle from the right has priority.
Also important to mention: right before left applies to every side road, but you only have to stop if there is a vehicel coming. So it isn't the same like at a stop sign.. And de yellow scare sign means Mainroad where you have the right of way. Most time mainroads have also sidewalks and they discontinue at a junction with other mainroads. But at a junction with side roads coming in, the sidewalk is continued. So pedestriens have the right of way if you turn there and cross the sidewalk
It doesn't matter what size the Mercedes is....if you're too stupid to adjust the seat and steering wheel properly before driving, you're better off taking the bus. And that he doesn't even manage to park the "too small" car within the lines.....all you need to know about his driving skills.
If Americans had to get a driver's license according to German rules and regulations, 95% would fail. The American driver's license should not be recognized in Europe if American tourists want to rent a car in Europe.
100% agree. There should be study and test centres situated at rental car agencies in ir near airports. Certain foreign driving licences will be accepted, thoss psople just have to do a couple of hours study on local driving codes and international road signs. Others will have to take a test and reach a certain standard.
That would've been so much funnier if they do so and the police officer has to explain to them that they drove into a pedestrian area and tried to go down to a metro station.
The weird thing is that we have to pay 2000 euro at least to get a driver's licence to then share the road with Americans who got their licence for not crashing driving across a car park. That goes for expats too, American driver's licences should simply not be recognized by our governments.
They were one of teh occupation powers for decades, can't just tell the guys with all the soldiers here from a place where you have to go drive everywhere they suck at driving...
The first clip is at Marienplatz in Munich and that is the very center of the pedrestrian area. It is not that easy to enter this area by car. 😀 And the "tunnel" is the entrance to the metro.
Germans seems to manage driving through the pedestrian area in groningen during the bloemetjesmarkt as well 😂 so it's not just Americans not understanding the difference between streets for driving and walking
I just love how its not just "Germans" but literally everyone inlcuding tourists, horses, probably the pidgeons, and even the stone statues and figurines on the Marienplatz in Munich are staring down these trespassers :)
👀 yes, exactly 😅 Like "What the hell are they doing here? 🤔 Let's watch" 👨🦱 🙀 🐶 "oh no, that is so wrong." 🙈 "Oh, wait. maybe, only maybe, these are Americains, you know ? " 😅
The thing about „right before left“ is that is applies automatically when there are no signs present. In Germany (maybe all of Europe I am actually not sure) it works with levels: 1. Policeman 2. Traffic Lights 3. Signs 4. Right before left Meaning if there are signs and a traffic light then the signs only apply if the traffic is not working. This also means that right before left automatically applies if there is basically nothing, just a bare intersection. This only applies to intersections though and not like driveway exits or something like that. We actually have a right before left sign, but that one is just a reminder and is usually used when it was changed from signs to right before left or if for some reasons people consistently do it wrong at the intersection. That could be if one road are super small and people do not actually realize that it is an intersection.
Yep, that's how it works in Spain as well. Although there are almost always signs where you need to yield, usually painted on the floor. I can't remember a time where I had to apply the "right before left" rule in my area in my year and few months of driving.
I believe the EU works like this: We have the right to drive with a driver's license from one country to another, meaning 99% of the rules/signs are the same or else we couldn't drive.
Not fully true: There kann also be signs for Vorfahrtstraße beforehand, then there do not have to be signs at every crossroad and still rechts-vor-links would not apply. Signs like Vorfahrtstraße have to be explicitly canceled with signs.
UK driver here! I have a US boyfriend and we visited his folks out of the city by about 90 minutes. I love driving anyway but I enjoyed the challenge of US roads! I'll never forget, we visited an observatory and my boyfriend warned me the road was steep. I started to drive up and said, "Cute, you think this is steep. This is my normal!"
I never understood why Americans think that "you have to yield to all cars that arrived at the intersection earlier than you" is super easy while "you have to yield to all cars coming from your right" is extremely complex and impossible to do.
@@deadrightsadvocate That is in an intersection in which there is a stop sign in both your and the opposite side of you when a car is there, in an all way stop it’s who got there first
@@PepeLaRana1 I am in agreement with you. I was just stating that there is a rule (and it is taught in high school) that you yield to cars on the right. It just doesn’t apply when a car is directly opposite of you as you’re both equally “to the right.”
during driving exams they make sure you encounter one situation like this but in reality it's rare and usually only in urban areas where you're going slow. also more and more you have a signe that explicitely says yield or don't yield (and if not people learn to look at the ground to see stop or yield marks on the adjascent road and know they don't have to yield then)
Jep, I'm on a roadtrip right now at the Alps, and I can confirm that was hella wide. It does get sketchy when there is a lot of deadzones because of corners and buildings or mountains and cliffs being on either side so you can't see oncoming traffic and the road is even smaller (like 30% smaller). Especially on roads like the one I just described where the allowed speed limit is 80kmph, some things get real weird at times. I especially noticed this in the mountains of Portugal and here in the Alps. However I've also heard friends say the same about Montenegro and places in that region of the Balkans. Speeding cars, two-way roads that are the width of a single pickup truck, windy roads with cliffs and rocks on both sides, and invisible zones around basically every corner, oh and people driving crazy speeds for such roads (at times). Thank god that I've not encountered any Americans so far.
I think it is a two way road, just as its in town its one car at a time due to the parked cars. What scary is when that road doesn't have the cars alongside and is a 60 and other cars are coming the other way!
I don't understand why in the USA they use Stop-signs everywhere. Here in Finland, and I imagine in most of Europe, the default and mostly used sign is the Yield or Give way sign when you have to give way to traffic on a bigger or more important street/road. A stop sign is here used only when the intersection is for some reason more risky or dangerous, because a stop sign means that you always have to completely stop your vehicle before continuing, which you don't have to do with a yield sign. In most cases the yield sign is adequate.
Yes, the stop signs in the US are a pest. And most ridiculous is when they have 4 stop signs on a intersection. Then the one with the most expensive car can go first... :)
it's so people don't have to think for themselves. a stop sign tells you to stop, no thinking necessary. at a yield sign the driver has to look around and decide/judge if he can go or if he has to let someone else go first, this often includes negotiation with other road users.
7:36 tbh she's doing it wrong... the "priority to the right" is common all over Europe, in France it's "priorité à droite" and NO, you DON'T have to stop at any crossing where there is a road to the right, you just need to slow down and be carefull because IF there is a car coming from that right street, you HAVE to let them pass. but it's NOT a stop sign, more like a "gives way" but only to the right street. it's also the default rule for any unmarked crossings. The triangular sign she show indicate that YOUR road is the one that have priority, so it overule the "priority to the right" rule.
@@quencre well if she isn't stopping, she stomp on the brakes, that indicate a clear lack of anticipation that's not only bad for the passengers, it's also bad for the car. She just had to crawl through the street while being carefull of the intersections, putting your passenger head in the dashboard at each crossing was unecessary
@@XxJay71xX did you watch the video or what ? It's clear that it's the husband who is exaggerating his reactions, since she does not move. Yes, she brakes, which is what you have to do for a right of way. No problem with anticipation. She does it well
@@XxJay71xX while everything you said is truth from the perspective of how poeple should go about the "piority to the right", you lacking the obsevartion skill to understand the husband was clearly exagerating and she didnt break that hard at all... while you dont have any visibility to the right you are expected to slow down, the husband isnt use to that so he exagerate higly his reaction everytime she slow down a bit... ou can tell by the fact the girl barely move and by how the background move.
9:50 she shouldn't stop, just really slow down in case she had to stop. When you have to give priority to the traffic comin from your right, you don't have to stop unless someone comin, just slow down, watch, and repeat until you don't have to yield
Yea we have the same rule here in Sweden and I know Norway has the same and it's basically slow down so you can stop if someone comes from the right so stopping is not necessary. In Sweden its called Höger regeln that translates into the right rule and it's there to give better traffic flow and the whole idea is gone if you keep stopping if there are no traffic😅
Probably just exaggerating for the video. Would make for a a lot more boring video if she just told him that you have to give way for anyone coming from your right.
The fun thing is the European signs are all very similar largely because they are all signatories to the 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals Knowing these helps a lot in driving in another country.
It makes is very uniform and easy to drive all over Europe without reading up on every countries signs for sure! But you still find the odd ones that you just go "I wonder wtf that means". You might get some clues, like the shape and colour of the sign. But yeah, there are some rather odd ones that are VERY location specific. I personally love the "warning for [insert animal]". In my country we just use the deer one for all larger animals, but you can find signs with a cow, group of ducks, sheep, moose and yes, reindeer, on them. There are probably more like that. I also enjoy finding the ones letting me if there might be visably impaired or hard of hearing ppl in the area. Might sound stupid but it's good to know they might fiddle around at the crosswalk, not hear you as you drive up the the crosswalk or what not. That gives me as a driver the heads up that hey, you might need to stop a little longer here or just be more aware of what's going on around you. And that's great! Lowers the level of annoyance as you know WHY it might take them an extra 5 seconds to cross the road instead of just thinking they are stupid or something. The fact that someone who can't see at all can make their way through town without someone guiding them is amazing and so, so cool! :)
By tunnel, didn't they mean the passage in front of the Beck, past the toy museum? On their right side? The statement about the “flower pot in the middle of the street” also makes more sense. The entrance to the underground is facing away from the street.
@@thebamplayer I always wondered how people ended up in those situations and I guess it is just wilful ignorance. The driver just kept repeating it was all fine when it clearly wasn't. How do people ignore reality that willingly?
@10:00 she's braking quite abruptly for the crossings, but it's not mandatory to stop as at a stop sign so if you scan the road and adapt your speed you can cruise them quite comfortably. Also in the Netherlands, cyclists have right of way too. Nowadays most of thise areas have a 30 kmh limit anyway.
The weirdest part for me in Rechts vor Links guy is that he as a passenger is stressed by the road sign. Like, somebody forgot to tell the bro he's not a driver
"it's not mandatory to stop as at a stop sign so if you scan the road and adapt your speed you can cruise them quite comfortably" I don't know where you're from but it IS absolutely mandatory to stop at a stop sign here in France; and the rule is to wait for at least 3 seconds. you're mixing up with the yield sign. In this situation where there is no sign she just has to yield not stop. big difference.
@valdir7426 read again mate 😉 I wrote...not mandatory to stop AS at a stop sign. Stop sign means you have to halt no matter what, I think that's the only sign that's quite clear throughout the world 😄
14:37 I am Swedish and that sign is obviously fake and a joke. The only place in Europe you would find names like this is Wales, written in welsh letters even.
I personally believe Americans should get a driving test. When's draving in the UK, the amount of Americans killing civilians from American bases in the uk is ridiculous.
@@PedroConejo1939 I know of at least 5 in the last 6 years. And the latest one is of Anne Sacoolas crashed into Harry Dunn and killed him but was initially granted diplomatic immunity Then she flew back to america on the same day
@@JonnyVision88What makes it worse is that she initially agreed to cooperate witht he place but because her husband was a member of 'American intelligence' she skipped across thr pond and even Trump refused to help the Dunn familtly get closure!
There is a very serious downside to this. Here in the U.K. an American woman left an air force base and started driving on the wrong side of the road. She a motorcyclist killing him. She fled the scene and left the country. She claimed diplomatic immunity and has refused to return to this country for the Coroners inquest.
Almost the same thing happened in Italy, a woman from the USAF base was driving under the influence of alcohol and killed a 15 years old guy, at the moment the sentence was suspended. The aggravating circumstance of drunk driving was not recognized since the alcohol test, which had given a positive result, had been carried out more than two hours after the accident. Even will be confirmed, the sentence was 2 years and 6 months, too little for someone to take the life of other people
The thing is, she NEVER had diplomatic immunity. When the parents of the boy she killed went to the US to try and seek justice, they were blind-sided by Trump himself, in the White House, to try and let her meet and give them an apology, without returning for trial.
@@marco_grt4460 But here in the UK the perpetrator was flown out, on a scheduled USAF flight, by the US State Department. Without telling anyone that she was a senior CIA officer.
@@marco_grt4460 It's the US further making the statement that they don't have to obey our laws. In London, there is a congestion charge to enter. Currently the USA owes £14M in unpaid charges for their Embassy. It's a power play.
The female driving over the bridge in Ireland, the yellow barrier is a height barrier so larger high vehicles such as delivery vans, Lorries and buses can’t cross the bridge
There's an advert on TV here in Norway, where there's a pair of Swedes (always the butts our jokes, and we're the butt of theirs, it's all good) in a lorry, who come up to a hight marker for a bridge and one says to the other "Ser du nån polis?/Do you see any cops?", and then they just go, and the ad cuts to a black screen as they smash into the bridge. It's very funny! Don't remember what it's for tho..
In France we never have 4 way stop signs intersections. Either one road has priority over the other (with yield sings and ground markings on the non priority road) or it's priority to cars coming from the right. Stop signs will typically be used instead of a yield sign if the intersection is dangerous (obstructed visibility for example). The logic behind priority to cars coming from your right is: - you can always turn right without yielding (you have priority over the cars coming from the left and cars coming from the front making a left turn) - if you go straight, there is only one side you need to yield to. - it's the default rule when there are no signage, so cheap Why would you want more stop signs? Yielding is so much nicer as you don't have to stop when there is no one to yield to, only slow down. Unnecessary stop signs are probably a big factor in people running them and causing accidents.
@@valdir7426 roundabouts require more space. There are used a lot but mostly for medium trafic intersections outside of compact citie areas. For very small traffic intersection (like residents only), where you would find a 4 way stop signs in the USA, priority to trafic coming from the left does the job very well for the cheapest price.
6:05 People from the Netherlands are the tallest in the world (on average) and small European cars don't seem to be too much of a problem for them. I suspect this gentleman didn't adjust his seat properly, he didn't push it back enough, and that's why his knees are nearly hitting the wheel. 8:15 road signs are the same all over outside the US, and they're like that (hardly any writing) because no matter what language you speak, you can understand them, as they're just images and mean the same everywhere. The shape and colour of the signs have different meanings: the triangle ones are "warning/danger" signs. Round signs with a blue background are "mandatory" actions, round ones with red outlines are "forbidden" actions, and square ones are "informative". The two exceptions are the Yield sign, which is an inverted triangle, and the Stop sign, an octagon. Both these signs have particular shapes so they can be recognized even when you see them from the back. The one at 8:30 is a "right of way" at a crossroads sign. There's a reason why drivers' licenses in Europe (and in many other places) require you to go through an official test (where I'm from it's on two parts, first you do a Q&A written test, and then a driving test). You need to know what you're doing while controlling a machine than can kill not only you, but other people who aren't inside it.
8:57 The yield signs in Gerany are IMPORTANT. Ignore them, and you've got a decent chance of having an accident. People on a road with that sign will not look, they will expect to have right of way, and will enter the crossing at full speed without lookng, as for them the other roads do not exist while they have right of way. Vorfahrt (right of way) is holy in Germany. Also see how she keeps her eyes glue to the road almost constantly and never lets go of the steering wheel? That's what Germans learn. Anything else is very dangerous on German roads, as people are expected to adher to the road rules. There are tons of road signs, and every one is important.
@@yqz251 yes but it looked like she always did a full stop at those intersection. AFAIK here in belgium if you can see that the incomming road i clear you dont need to stop or even slow down. Depending on your vision of that road ofcourse
That could amount to careless driving in the UK if there was an accident. UK drivers are taught to take care at crossings in case someone pulls out without looking properly.
I ride a motorbike, so even on priority roads I always expect to be overlooked by cars coming from the right. If I end up having "he had right of way" chiselled on my gravestone, I won't get anything out of it either.
A friend of mine has an American wife. When she came to the UK she had to take a UK driving test after 6 months residence - she failed the test 6 times for failing to stop and give way entering a roundabout on a dual carriageway road. ……………. On the 7th fail she didn’t realise/ see that there had been traffic lights installed on that roundabout and not only did she still drive straight through onto the roundabout but she also got a ticket in the post a few weeks later because the new traffic lights have red light cameras on them! She gave up trying to get her UK license and gets driven around everywhere now.
You have to question the intelligence of your friend, he picked a very dumb wife. Driving a car and taking a test CANNOT be that hard. If it's that complicated to drive in the UK compared to the rest of the world something is very wrong in the UK.
I feel like adding traffic lights to a roundabout kind of defeats the purpose of a roundabout in the first place, though. The entire point is for traffic to remain organised and safe without having to stop.
11:37 Nah! That's not narrow, plenty of room for two cars. Wait till you get to the lanes where you are brushing through hedgerow on either side of your car!
Bridge at 13:00 is in Donegal, Ireland. Just outside Ballybofey. It’s one way. Yield to oncoming. First on has right of way. Yellow bar is height restrictions.
German driver here and I have to say, driving in the UK sounded way worse than it actually was in the end. Drove several times, with an camper van trough the windy Scottish highlands, rented car through the English tight city streets and the Welsh countryside. But I do recommend anyone to drive a car with the steering on the right side. It is way easier for turns and you will not have any hassle with toll booths or ticket automation like that. You also remember to turn into the correct lane there as well. Additionally, if you get your car from Sixt, you will not have any big advertisement on the car, so you will look live a native as well and not get hassled. The only time I admittedly struggled was leaving a small country road and naturally turning into the wrong lane in a (empty) two lane road...yikes. Realized it right ahead and quickly left the wrong lane...so...yeah, all fine in the end. Oh and driving in the southern part of Italy, you start to feel your inner Mussolini awakening and beginn winking 🤌 shouting and honking like the rest of the bunch till you arrived. Seeing that, how they once controlled most of the ancient world at one point still eludes me ^^
An advantage of having your own car with the steering wheel on the left, is that everyone can see you are a foreigner. People are more patient with you. Your licence plate is like a warning sign. If you drive a UK car nobody knows you might be struggling a bit.
Yielding being commonplace also makes the roads and sidewalks a lot safer for pedestrians. It keeps drivers more alert and ready to respond to people on foot or bikes.
Where I live there are many "right has priority on left" roads, hidden in-between some brick-buildings! So many people driving here for the first time, don't see the priority road hidden in-between buildings, there are zero signs to warn them from the priority roads presence, etc ... The only option to know that road is there, is to put on your GPS map to have a top-view of the area... The "rechts vor links" rule has caused more accidents here, than it has prevented! Yes also with pedestrians and cyclists! So in my opinion, it's the most idiotic road-rule known to mankind!
@@timmy7201 That sounds more of a driver issue than a fault with the rule. It's should be impossible for any halfway alert driver to miss the presence of a crossing road. Even in areas where you can't see far ahead you will always easily spot a crossing. You may not be able to have a good view onto the other road and need to proceed slowly and carefully, but missing the road entirely? Naw, I call BS on that. Plus these areas tend to be residential which means reduced speedlimits so even if you don't have good visibility into the crossing road to see if traffic is approaching you should be slow enough to react (to equally slow incoming traffic) and thus easily prevent an incident. Just gotta pay the minimum of attention and there's no road that will surprise you. Maybe they should spend less time looking at their navigation display and more time watching where they're driving. I've seen some old cities that survived from medieval time with roads that are barely wide enough for a car and roads that cross in such tightly build areas that it's basically impossible to look into the incoming road until you're halfway across (though they usually installed mirrors to give people a line of sight and see if someone is approaching), but you will NEVER not see the road itself if you just look ahead to where you're driving. If people have trouble spotting crossings they need to check their eyesight and are probably unfit to drive.
@@timmy7201 Or the driver could just open their eyes and concentrate on their surroundings and not let themselves be distracted by things in the car...
@@bramscheDave It's easy to blame the driver, if you haven't seen the actual issue I refer to in reality... The problem usually occurs, when there is a combination of: - You're on a narrow road, that bends slightly to the right, hiding any intersection at the right behind the walls - There is a priority road from the right, that intersects your road in an 80 degree angle or less, hiding it even more - The road you're driving on has a small or no sidewalk, putting you less than a meter from the buildings beside the road - All buildings on the side are build using the same material and/or color, especially red/orange brick buildings - The speed limit is 50 km/h (31 mph), but accidents even happen in roads with a 30 km/h limit (18.6 mph). - There is zero indication that there is an intersection ahead, no signs or road markings It's especially with the red/orange brick buildings that I notice many accidents in my area, the little brick stones with the mortar lines ruin many peoples depth of sight. Or sometimes the road is wide enough to see the intersection, yet it's hidden away by someone who parked their large car / truck right in front of the intersection. There are often even cyclists who can't stop in time for priority traffic from their right, forget about cars being able to stop...
@@Aotearas It's easy to blame the driver, if you haven't seen the actual issue I refer to in reality... The problem usually occurs, when there is a combination of: - You're on a narrow road, that bends slightly to the right, hiding any intersection at the right behind the walls - There is a priority road from the right, that intersects your road in an 80 degree angle or less, hiding it even more - The road you're driving on has a small or no sidewalk, putting you less than a meter from the buildings beside the road - All buildings on the side are build using the same material and/or color, especially red/orange brick buildings - The speed limit is 50 km/h (31 mph), but accidents even happen in roads with a 30 km/h limit (18.6 mph). - There is zero indication that there is an intersection ahead, no signs or road markings It's especially with the red/orange brick buildings that I notice many accidents in my area, the little brick stones with the mortar lines ruin many peoples depth of sight. Or sometimes the road is wide enough to see the intersection, yet it's hidden away by someone who parked their large car / truck right in front of the intersection. There are often even cyclists who can't stop in time for priority traffic from their right, forget about cars being able to stop...
In the Campsie Hills north of Glasgow there is a bend in the road so many American tourists drive off into the drainage ditch, the locals call it Yankee Corner.
Given how ridiculously easy it is to get a license in the US and the fact that it seems most americans consider driving a right rather than a privilege, Im actually baffled that they are allowed to come over here and just go driving, no checks whatsoever to make sure they actually know what they're doing and have atleast some grasp of our rules, signs etc..
Yes! In these sort of clips, they always blame someone else. "I feel unsafe, why did someone else build the roads like this instead?" If you genuinely don't feel safe driving, stop driving and turn off the car! You don't have any right to put people at risk. It's like they think there's a natural right to drive, and they should only stop if something prevents them. No, it's the other way round: you naturally shouldn't drive, but you can do so if you feel safe and comfortable that you know what you are doing.
The signs used in Europe are actually quite straightforward, and come in four categories - with some exceptions: 1) White triangle with a red border, pointing up: warning 2) White circle with a red border: prohibition (maximum speed, max height, etc) 3) Solid blue circle: command (minimum speed, cycle lane, pedestrian zone, etc) 4) Solid blue rectangular: informative (speed advice, one way, car park, etc) Exceptions include the octagonal stop sign (same as in the USA), solid red circle with a horizontal white stripe (no entry, one way street), solid blue with a red border (having to do with parking), solid light grey circle with diagonal stripes (end of all prohibitions), white triangle with a red border, pointing down (yield), and the square at a 45 degree angle with a thick white border, and either a yellow or orange centre (you have the right of way). It's not uniformly consistent: the sign for cycle lane or pedestrian zone implicitly means that you can't drive a car there, but it's not explicitly indicated by a white circle with a red border. The reason why it's a command is because it's not optional for a bicycle to ride on the path: if there's a sign for a path, you're not allowed on the main road. Also, the blue rectangular sign informing you of an incoming zebra crossing (crosswalk in the USA) implies that you _must_ stop at the crossing. In Northern Europe and mountainous areas, where they get a lot of snow, the white may be replaced by yellow, for increased visibility. The sign shown from 8:07 onward means 'careful, there's an intersection coming, but you have the right of way'. What's on the signs can differ from one country to the next. If you drive in a forested area, you may see triangular sign with a deer, which means 'crossing wildlife' (which could also be boars, or other animals). Where I live, they have rather endearing signs for crossing cats and hedgehogs.
Maybe if Americans had proper diving lessons and tests to begin with, they wouldn't be such terrible drivers in the first place. OK it's strange at first driving on the other side of the road (although many British/Irish drivers manage it), but driving on the side you're used to (95% of Europe) shouldn't be a problem. There's an ongoing case of an American woman who killed a British person, by driving on the wrong side of the road. It's not all a joke.
One of the biggest problems is that they don't use the standard road signs that are the norm pretty much anywhere else in the world. They should really at least be educated on that if they want to drive here.
@@applecider7307 And obviously the US government refused to extradite her so she could face trial for killing someone. It makes me wonder how many criminals have been extradited from the USA to the UK against how many have been extradited from the UK to the US?
As an experienced driver on the right side of the road, when I drove for the first time in UK I was following a simple rule in order to keep the correct lane: the steering wheel must be close to the middle of the road.
The times I've visited left side driving countries, I haven't dared to drive. But I've had colleagues that said it wasn't that difficult to get used to... But I mean... my routine would tell me a right turn is kinda trivial. And while the gear stick is to the other side, your pedals are where you're used to... that part isn't mirrored.. Nah, I'm good, I don't need to try.
@@BenjaminVestergaard I have been driven a rhd car here in Norway. A bit strange at first, but no problem. Never driven in UK tho', unless big cities I think it would be fairly easy. Just remember to have the steering wheel close to center line and it should work ok.
Being used to driving/cycling on the right, I made the mistake on my first left turn on my first bike ride in UK age 18. Even though I had contemplated beforehand that it should be easy. - Never happened again, but it takes some getting used to...
I live in the UK, and the only time I have had difficulty driving in Europe, outside The British Isles, is when I have taken my own right hand drive car. You are right. When I rent a car in France, for example, the inside of the care reflects the driving environment and it is hard to go on to the wrong carriageway. Obviously, for about thirty minutes, you whack your hand on the door reaching for the gear stick a few times, but other than that it is quick and easy to adapt.
An American woman hired a car in Newcastle, and phoned our garage in Edinburgh complaining the car was very slow and very noisy, turns out she thought she had hired an automatic, it wasn't, and the gearbox was virtually solid.
Sounds like a bs story - she would have had to use the clutch to get it in first gear, and not stall it, so if she could do all that, she still thought it was automatic????
All those signs are international standard, I'm not German and I know what it means because it's an international standard... and it's quite easy to know when you have right of way or not: a) If no sign exists, it's right before left as she said, it's an international standard, if someone is on my right then they have the right of way (when there's no signs!!!). Goes for all kinds of vehicles except animal traction vehicles (even if they are on the right they don't have right of way). b) If there's a sign to give right of way (like the triangle one with the black arrow with crossings - be it exactly that one or derivates) then the other roads crossing this one will have a sign informing they don't have the right of way and/or they'll have a stop sign at the crossing (an octogonal sign, unmistakable for both those in that lane as well as for those on the road crossing that one, so I'll know you don't have right of way because I can see, unmistakably, your stop sign... it's the only octogonal sign for a reason: it stands out like a sore thumb). Four exceptions to the right before left rule: 1) Roundabouts. No one outside of the roundabout has right of way over those inside the roundabout, even thou they clearly are on the right of those inside the roundabout. EDIT: this is not a true exception per se, as there's need to be a roundabout sign to make it so and give right of way to those inside... because without the roundabout sign it isn't a roundabout, it's a plaza, and everyone inside it loses right of way to those on the right. 2) When coming out of a train crossing, there's never right before left for the car crossing the train tracks, even if he's on the left he has priority, always! The one coming out from the train track has always (always!) right of way. 3) Military columns (of cars) and police escorts have right of way. 4) Vehicles on tracks (like trams) have right of way. EDIT: so yeah, I think true exceptions are the last 3, the roundabout one isn't a true exception as it's only a roundabout when there's the roundabout sign (else it's a plaza and right before left or sign rules aplies), and so it falls into either the a) or b) situations mentioned above, depending if it has the sign or not.
10:27 That's not even a narrow one... say like the one outside my house, where there really isn't space for two cars to pass. And despite this, the speed limit is a mere 60 mph.
You can technically record a driving test with the permission of the examiner, only showing the road, not the examiner and no voice recording if I'm not mistaken. Of course this one is just a mock test or a lesson but the driving instructor put it on the Internet with that caption to get reactions.
The Mercedes was a GLA which is the smallest SUV Mercedes is offering. However you still should be able to sit comfortably in it if you adjust your seat unless you‘re like 2 meters or bigger. Regarding the ‚rechts vor links‘ video: at every intersection without a traffic sign you have to yield for cars coming from your right hand side. The triangle sign with the arrow in it means you have the right of way for only the next intersection while the white square with the yellow square in it means that you have the right of way for the whole street you‘re driving on.
@sebsch1858 We have right of way signs and also "give way to oncoming traffic " signs as well, in the UK, but we also have a basic rule about who gives way to whom at a junction. Generally, if we approach another vehicle from the right, we have the priority. This works fairly well unless three cars arrive at a three-street junction, such that everyone is on someone's right!
@@charleshayes2528 same in Germany. For the stated situation you have to arrange yourself with the other drivers on who goes first. After that we‘re back to ‚rechts vor links‘. At least that‘s how it‘s done in Germany.
@@robgraham9234 for a rental GLA it‘s likely to be a manual seat adjustment. There should be a handle at the front of the seat to move it back or forth. Height adjustment should be a pump handle at the side of the seat
"Rechts vor Links": if there are no traffic signs on the road (usually in remote country areas) at a crossroads, you give way to any car coming from your right. In Dutch, it's called "voorrang van rechts" in French, it's called "priorité de droite". This is a kind of "default" rule if no other traffic signalling is available.
Not specifically in remote country areas, also in cities, especially with streets not created for through traffic. In rural areas their are usually actually more signs.
@@diegodessy9700 It looks like she isn't actually stopping but just slowing way down, I assume because the visibility is very limited along the road from the right. He's just saying she's stopping cause that's the way americans "stop" at stop signs - rolling stops.
@@diegodessy9700It depends on visibility at the crossroads. We don't see what she's seeing and she is driving a RHD car making angles even more accute.
8:55 -ish. That's a "Don't yield" sign actually. (I don't know if that was posted before) The largest line is the line with the priority, and the thinner one is the one that has to give way (or even have a stop signal/sign). It is only use when the normal rule of "right of way" (or the way on the right has the priority over you) doesn't apply. Triangle pointing up signs with red out line are for danger, but this one is more to warn you that you don't have to yield on the next crossing. It could be dangerous to slow down, or even stop here, as it is mostly used when you drive quite fast, or when the visibility is low, with an important traffic.
The sign at 8:31 is a "right of way" sign, meaning that you have the right of way for just this one intersection. There is a sign for "primary road" also that gives you the right of way on any intersection on this road until the sign is cancelled.The Yield sign you mentioned is mounted with the point down, not up, and that we also have here in Germany. When no signs exist, then the rule "Rechts vor Links" (right before left) applies: the car coming from your right has the right of way, the car coming from your left has to yield. Size and type of road or street don't matter.
Something I've wondered about for a while now just clicked: whenever I see videos from the USA I feel like it's always flat. That's obviously not true for the entire country. But maybe it's not just the topography being flat or hilly - but it's the layout of cities and suburbs. It seems like in the US there are mostly trimmed flat frontyards, the houses are the only things sticking out. Or everything is a flat parking lot, just the buildings sticking out. and the advertisements. The video from the UK just demonstrated that there are a lot of walls or bushes and flowerpots along the streets. It's more multilayered somehow. Do I make sense?
Yeah, I also wonder why they have these boring front yards, grass and a tree or two. Why not have bushes to fence in your property, some berry bushes and a few nut trees and or apple, pear etc. With these additions more birds would come and bring joy (except maybe not due to the many free roaming cats they seem to have). Several decades ago I drove around USA with some friends in a car and were in more different states than most Americans visit during a lifetime. Nature could change but it were the same chains and the same layouts almost everywhere. They say they are free and have "choices" but it´s more uniformed than most dictatorships when it really comes down to it. We had two very unpleasant encounters with police along the route and they demonstrated shocking behaviour that clearly were overstepping their boundaries. It got fully cured of any thoughts of moving to USA during those 3 months. We heard multiple gunshots while driving in 3 different cities. I have since visited at least 40 other nations and never heard a single gunshot fired anywhere else.
Yea you’re pretty spot on. There are hilly areas/cities in the U.S. sure, but it’s more rare. One example I have is somewhere I’ve lived.. I lived a couple years in the Las Cruces/El Paso area (Texas/New Mexico border) and it’s one of the more hilly/mountainous cities in the country, various curvy hilly roads that are beautiful, but two things seem consistent with US cities.. the downtown was mostly flat and the suburbs/neighborhoods were mostly flat. Our house was surrounded by natural desert and sand dunes.. but the neighborhood had been obviously flattened when constructed and everyone had basically flat yards. (No grass in New Mexico though) I notice cities, roads and so on basically follow the natural topography in various European roads and settlements. I admire that, it seems more natural and aesthetic that way
A lot of times, this is done on purpose. A physical barrier like walls, bushes, or trees, along the narrow roads, help discourage speeding, forcing drivers to pay more attention to the road. In cities in the Netherlands, lots of green is often used to make city centres more inviting for pedestrians and cyclists. But it's also used as a natural way to cool down.
was about to say that as well... it is a height restriction sign with a mount that restricts the height of the car and you should hear it in case you are too high
An American in Luxembourg once told me he had taken his hire car to 230 on the autoroute. When I told him, if caught he'd get a hefty fine. He replied ' It wouldn't be so bad, we checked and 230 is just over the speed limit.' He knew the car speedometer was in kph, but for some reason thought the autoroute speed limit of 130 was in mph, like in the U.S.A. He was doing 143m.p.h., close to double the speed limit.🙄
In Slovenia the car would be taken away by the police and he would receive a hefty fine after appearing in front of a judge. Besides, how did he assume that the speed limit was in mph if the speedometer is in kph?! This is really dumb 😂
Even if he did not figure out that the speedometer and the speed limit signs would logically be in the same units did he really think 130 mph could be feasible as a speed limit?
If he drove double the speed or more than 200 km/h on the highway in Denmark. He would get a big fine, loose the driving license in Denmark for 3 years, get 20 days in prison and get the car confiscated.. and it would be sold on an auction.
In sweden, any intersection that's not on a marked mainroad or highway and it's not marked with a yield sign on the joining road you have the "right-rule" where you always have to yield to any traffic from your right
I remember when getting my Canadian Forces Europe licence to replace my Canadian licence back in the late '80s, we had to attend some classroom sessions and pass a written test. The instructor place a lot of emphasis on the "right has priority on left" rule (rechts vor links) and priority roads. Most of the accidents that Canadian military members and their dependents got into when first starting to drive in Germany was mistakenly believing they had priority for going through an intersection on small city streets.
About that commenter on the first video who said "I can't believe they made it that far without being stopped." There's only so much random bystanders can do if the 3 people in the vehicle just don't get the hint when they get "Are you seriously going to do this?!?" stares from a whole restaurant patio full of people.
Would've been better if they did what people at a market near me did when a car decided to ignore all signs blocking cars from entering, riding into a street filled with market stalls and pedestrians. They swarmed the car, banged on the doors and roof, and forced the driver to go back.
I would approach the car and politely inform them that they were in a pedestrian only area and the quickest way out. I wouldn’t do it in Germany though unless it was obvious they were anglophones because I don’t speak German
@ firstly, languages of the World don’t divide into English and German. The driver could be from some other country. Secondly, there’s no reason why all Germans couldn’t be stupid enough to drive into a pedestrian zone
@@jeremypnet You mentioned you don't speak Germany. And Germany. Not that strange to come to the conclusion that you might be talking about Germans speaking German in Germany, not Austrians speaking German in Germany.
Those English lanes were WIDE!! Try driving through places like Cornwall and Wales and the Scottish Highlands, where you are an inch from the verge on either side of the road, and the cow parsley grows so far out into the road it looks like it's a foot wide, and yes, I'm used to roads like these! lol
Not been on country lanes near Dartmoor then. One narrow car wide with plants growing in the middle of the lane. Also Devon banks which are made of stones and earth topped with a hedge. Which grows out during the summer making them even more narrow.
@@susanwestern6434 Yeah the walls with a bit of soil and a hedge on top is called a 'Cornish Hedge'. Make no mistake, those 'hedges' will turn your car to scrap metal with no warning if you aren't careful! The most amazing thing I ever saw was one day trip from uni, we were in a 52 seater coach driving down those lanes like he was driving a mini on the motorway! Equal parts terrifying and impressive!
@@automation7295 bit tricky as a non-english speaker: It should say restriction/limitation, order/obligation not to exceed... True, the blue O is an order to do something.
Honestly, the little British road is a common rural route. This road is probably much older than the United States. We also have roads that date back to the Roman Empire. I think American interchanges on 8-lane highways are much scarier.
Agreed. German here. The narrow roads are normal in any rural European town. You just have to be on the watch and always know what kind of traffic to expect from the opposite side. Once in a while, you have to stop to let others through, at others, the opposite party will clearly stop to let you through (depending on which side of the road cars are parked - the one on the side of no parked car having the right to go first). It‘s really NOT rocket science!
Not only are narrow roads more common here, they're also safer. This is why many Dutch cities have narrowed a lot of their roads, as it discourages speeding, and forces drivers to pay attention to their surroundings.
Roads in the US are designed for cars. Roads in many parts of Europe and UK are not. They can be thousands of years old, they were pathways for walking or riding a horse or a small cart pulled by a horse. Adapting them for cars means people need to use common sense as well as know the rules, written and unwritten. Don’t drive in Europe until you have become used to how things work! It’s like Europeans visiting America who think they can walk to the shops, something they do frequently back home.
4:00 European cities can have these areas start right next to roads and some sidewalks are the same level as the road with very few poles or pots or whatever to divide it. We also don't spam our cities with police. We just assume people know the rules. Not excusing these people, just saying it's actually pretty easy to reach these areas by car, even though you're not supposed to.
2:00 well, 60 years ago this was the busiest street for car traffic in whole Munich. But what happened, they set their navigation into Pedestrian mode.
The first one is impressive. There are side streets you can use to get onto the pedestrian area, but it's hard not to notice you're entering the pedestrian area. I'm sad they didn't try the tunnel - that's the entrance of the Marienplatz metro.
The Marienplatz adventure leaves me flabbergasted. You will see cars there, but these cars will be delivery vans for the businesses, ambulances or vans for transporting handicapped people. I admittedly haven't walked every street leading to the square but I'm still pretty sure you cannot get there without running a "no vehicles" sign. As for the "right before left" sign, it is actually a blessing. I used to live in the middle of a 20 block area that had no stop or yield signs. Having to slow down and give way to anyone approaching from the right every 100 m or so helps make sure that you'll have no speeding cars in narrow streets. Then, just before I moved away, they changed that and gave priority to roads that went directly to the closest arterial road which encouraged drivers to take shortcuts through my street to avoid a couple of traffic lights on the main road. Not the brightest idea, if you ask me.
You have the yield sign visible for a second at 7:57. We just don't have the word Yield inside it. When there is no yield sign of any kind, then you have to yield to everyone coming from the right.
3:50 Drivers are stopped entering pedestrian areas by ... the traffic signs every driver should understand ! But Americans expect to see english text written on signs, else they are "lost in space" 😁
I think it's a joke about the song that's playing (Pearl Jam - Yellow Ledbetter) and how unintelligible the singing is... it probably works better if you can hear the song playing in the video
May be not in Sweden, but in Finland the can have really long and odd looking words. And in some countries where they want to protect a cultural heritage they have strange road signs. Like in Ireland, with the bilingual signs with Gealic - they have some crazy words as well. And some that nobody can read or pronounce.
I live in Munich, that first video had me crying😂😂😂😂 the flower pot in the middle of the road and the tunnel, I guess that was the entrance to the Ubahn (metro, underground) hahaha!! thank God he didn’t go there 😅
Yes, I'm Swedish too, and that sign doesn't make any sense at all in Swedish. Just some random letters put together and a few of them are Å, Ä and Ö to make it look Swedish… However, we don't use ”w” almost at all in Swedish, except for things like www…
8:50 that's the sign that you have the right of way for this single intersection. And cars from other directions have to yield. The yellow and white sign is the sign that you are on a street where you have the right of way on multiple intersections until a sign says otherwise
7:55 n°1] *Reverted triangle ; White center with Red outer lining* Warning ; you don't have priority, those coming from the right do : you *_HAVE_* to concede passage. [Note : triangle is "Warning" ; associated to danger.] 8:05 n°2] *Regular standing triangle ; White center with Red outerlining ; symbol of a big Black arrow pointing forward, crossed by a small black perpendicular black line on it's middle.* Warning ; you have the priority on this cross section : people from the right _AND_ left *_HAVE_* to concede you passage. 9:20 n°3] *Diagonally tilted square ; Yellow center with White outer lining.* Statuatory Statement ; road with "Priority" status over it's complete length : you have priority over the _WHOLE_ road, until further notice. [Note : square is "Statuatory" ; associated to administrative status to given area(s).) 12:37 (not a sign per se. But a specific passage) n°4] *Singular narrow two-way bridge with limited height signs on a yellow metal fence* As the name implies, it's a very narrow bridge with barely room for one vehicle and of a weight limited to car bellow the restricted frame limit. This very specific kind of passage is normally preceded from a sign akin to previously mentionned *_n°2_* ; a sign that state which side of the bridge has priority over the other to determine who gets to go through first should vehicles find themselves at both of it's end. (Of course, if a vehicle is already engaged in the middle because there was no one at the other end and then a vehicle appear on the extremities, the one already engage HAS to be left going through to liberate the passage.) It's also important to note that this kind of passage can also benefit from the presence of fully functionnal red lights to help managing traffic. But those ones are generally found at locations of either more intense traffic or due to strategically located one because of their geography (like a above water bridge or a narrow mountain tunnel leading to a military facility or a governmental affiliated one, for example.) 14:19 n°5] *Regular standing rectangle ; White center with black outer ligning.* Statuatory Statement ; announce the normally litterate hairless apes that this lands of the IKEA gods does not suffer neither men, women or punctuation. Turn back thee who enters here or face the cooked rice with meatball & berry jam punishment of penultimate constipation. ****** Finally, as a friendly reminder to any U.S.A. person reading this : the United Kingdom (U.K.) and Japan are, as far as i am aware of, two of the very countries in the world where traffic occurs on the left and the vehicle driver seat is on the right. As such, any "U.K." experience _CANNOT_ - i insist *CAN-NOT* - be considered representative of Europe's driving experience (regardless of traffic signs and regulation.) It's essentially like driving in mirror mode ; regardless of you being an American or a Spaniard, you WILL get confused since it's clashing with your own driving experience.
8:28 In most of Europe we have the same traffic rules and signs. When there are no signs all traffic coming from the right has the right of way. When there are shark teeth on the road pointing towards you, you have to give the right of way to all traffic from the left and right and if you see the sign she shows in the video (both the cross with arrow and the yellow one) you have the right of way before people coming from left and right.
Actually it's easy to drive into pedestrian areas because delivery cars and craftsmen have to do it, too, but you also have huge signs at any entry point to keep you out if you're an american tourist 🤣 In Germany you only have to stop at a stop sign. The triangular one she showed means more like "You have the right of way, but go slow and be aware, there's a crossing". "Rechts vor links" is only when there are no signs at all. In this case you have to go as slowly as necessary to be able to see an upcoming car from the right, to stop completely and to let it pass. The speed is depending on how far you can see around the corner. I think in driving school you learn to stop completely, but that's more like an overacting thing to show you thought of it - nobody really does that in real life. American: "One car lane is terrifying me." European: "If it fits slowly it fits fast too!" My theory is, that american cars have become so big that people just aren't able any more to assess the measures of their cars. In european parking lots you see cars going around other cars by just centimeters every day, even older models without cameras and all that beep beep beep. And they succeed.
In the UK, during a driving test, if the examinor says "take the second road on the right", you cannot count the roads which are one-way in the wrong direction. You're supposed to figure it out by skipping the roads you cannot take and only take the second road that you can take.
7:55 yield sign 8:02 its a sign that says that your road has the right of way but 🎉only for this crossroad No sign is Right before left If you are both on the same road but one goes straight and the other crosses the other side to make a turn than the one the goes straight has the right of way If 2 people are making a turn that intersect then the person who has the smallest turn can go first smallest, if they are the same size they in most cases dont intercept If there is a stop sign you must be standing still for 2 seconds to look If there are multiple people approaching an all stop than the first one arriving has the right of way. In the Netherlands there is also a sign that lets you know you are entering a dangerous crossroad(low visibilty for example) its a triangle(point up) red edge and white middle with a black X in the middle 9:55 you have that situation in high density like near entrances to homes on 30kmh(20mph) roads, you also have a lot of right before left on agricultural/remote roads due to there being less traffic In the center of a city you most likely have a road that has full clearance or traffic lights. With full clearance you have the right of way not matter what its indicared by white square with smaller yellow square in the middle at 45° angle Hi from the Netherlands, Netherlands/EU has a common sign mandate to a certain extend
When it comes to driving, Europe has it all, from the absolutely "German" German drivers (who obey every rule but drive like absolute mad lads and lasses on the Autobahn) to the sheer and utter chaos that unfolds whenever you venture south of the Alps or east of the Elbe river.
Well, this seems a bit biased to me. I have driven sicilian roads, german roads, polish roads, czech roads and irish roads and let me say, that bith sides of Elbe are rules obeying cultures compared to madness, that happens on both islands of Sicily and Ireland. :D
As someone from the Munich area who knows the place pretty well where the Americans drove through: it's not to hard to get there as you can drive legally till a 100m before this point to access a parking garage an the pedestrian area isn't that strictly separated from the streets, it's only a small curbs (to gain access for rescue, delivery and maintenance vehicles) and different underground. As you can see that the GPS is guiding them through there I assume they only follow the instructions and ignoring the shit tons off signs signaling the pedestrian area and big flower pods narrowing the street at the beginning of the pedestrian zone. Fun fact: the route they were driving was legally drivable for traffic 2p years ago and was changed later to become a part of the pedestrian zone.
13:07 those are height limits. They make sure there aren’t any trucks or other… big cars (?) getting on the bridge, probably because it ALSO has a weight limit. You often see those in parking lot entrances as well to keep camper vans out (especially in France as they have a lot of Roma people loving there)
The bridge is two way but there is no traffic lights present (that can be seen. As already said the yellow construction with a sign in the middle is a height restriction sign placed there as a-bit further on there is a low clearance and it is better to hit the sign then what’s ahead (cheaper to repair as well).
In the UK, if it's a triangle shape, it's a warning. If it's circular its a instruction. Most junctions are warnings of "give way," so proceed with caution, but you dont need to necessarily stop. But a no entry, stop sign, or speed limit is in a circle, so therefore, it is an instruction. Believe it or not, there's a method in the madness.
@@PedroConejo1939 Yes give way is only an order to slow down, but stopping isn't required unless it's necessary, unlike stop signs where stoping is required.
Even Europeans can sometimes be confused about the traffic culture in other Europeans. Far too many years ago, I spent some time in Scotland, where, as the saying goes, "Left is right and right is wrong. I.E. they drive on the left side of the road, as we, in Sweden did till 1967. In Scotland, and certainly on the Isle of Skye, many roads are one lane only, with pockets for meeting cars every mile or so, which calls for some fine-tuning of your speed, which is quite fun, esecially so, since most drivers do not switch their headlights on in daytime (and quite a few not even at dawn or dusk. I had become quite proficient at judging distances and speed, so cars coming towards me was no problem, thus i was driving rather fast. A car coming up behind seemed to be in a hurry, so it was "the pedals to the metal" to no avail. I had to give up and stopped, as did the other car.The driver, an elderly, really elderly, woman, wound down her side window and said: "Sir,You got your lights on, before returning the way we came. In most of Europe you must have your headlights on in daytime, a matter of road safety. I Scotland (and probably in the UK, it means "I´m in a hurry", Hans Strömberg, Sweden
In France, Belgium, Germany (I don't kmow the other countries), headlights must be turned on only at night or when the weather is dark. Nothing forbids you to turn them on during sunny daytime, but it seems do weird that nobody does it.
I lived in the UK for a while and got a real jump scare several times when a car with no lights on and "no one in the driver's seat" (according to my subconscious mind), suddenly started moving. 😂
So, having served in the British Army, where ever I served I had to take a theory test (every Year) to maintain my military licence, so I had to learn the local language and their traffic signs and systems. While living in Germany, my wife thought that Ausfarht (German for exit) was the biggest town Longest word I had to learn "ausgenommen zugmaschinen" no overtaking excluding tractors. So the common sense thing to do, if you are going to drive in a foreign country would be at least look up the driving standards and highways codes.
8:19 yield points down. Pointing up means, it is a warning/attention sign. This sign means ur approaching a crossing where you have priority over the crossing road. The crossing road will have the yield sign in this situation. This attention sign is analogous to the yellow white rhombus, but the rhombus is ‘continuous’ priority on the road, while this sign is used for incidental priority situations for this road.
In Australia everyone knows how to use as well as respect a GIVE WAY (YEILD) sign. Stop signs are more rare in Australia and give way is very common. When there are two streets or roads crossing, even if they are of similar size, one will always have right of way over the other and never ever a four way stop or lights for a small road or street unless one is a major road and lights are deemed necessary. Stop signs are only used on some T intersections where the terminating road stops for the cross road or a stop sign is used where traffic, obstacles and obstructions dictate a stop sign over a give way.
9:55 She should have driven slowly so that she could observe traffic without making her husband bob. 50 km/h is the limit, it isn't the compulsory minimum you must drive at in residential areas.
The fast, twisty and narrow 60mph roads near me are narrower than that... and often have deer, badgers, foxes and even sometimes dogs lurking in them, or magically stepping into them as you approach!
I am from Germany living in the UK, I could take you for a ride showing you the UK, taking the Eurotunnel into France going to Germany and explaining you all of these oddities! :D
Fun story, a friend who learned to drive in rural US - Mississippi I think - tried driving in SF when she was transferred there for work. She managed for a couple of days then one day was driving over a bridge somewhere - don't know the area but is there a huge and long bridge over water somewhere in SF - where there were multiple lanes and drivers swerving from one to the other without indicating or anything. She stopped the car on the side of the road with hazard lights flashing, waited for the police to come and then got out, and asked them to drive the car off the bridge, she was simply too terrified and at that stage was as likely to cause an accident as be the victim of one. At the far end she parked the car, left it and sold it to a housemate the same evening then handed in her licence [or license] the following day. She's never driven since despite living in first England and now Ireland for nearly 30 years. No public transport where she lives either, she uses a taxi or car pools with a neighbour for the weekly shopping trip.
In Germany (and also here in Switzerland), if there is no sign giving right of way, the vehicle coming from the right has the right of way. There are many such roads, especially in residential areas. There are hardly ever signs regulating right of way. Another possibility is that there is a designated priority road. This is marked with a yellow diamond sign with a white border. In this case, the side roads usually have a sign to give way where they meet the main road (Yield in the USA). There are also stop signs. The difference is that (this is the rule, but in reality mostly people don't actually do this) you really have to stop at a stop sign, regardless of whether other vehicles are coming or not. With yield signs, you only have to watch out for other vehicles that have right of way, but you don't necessarily have to stop. This is easier in the USA. In particular, I find the “all-way stop” regulation there very practical and better than the confusion in this country. In my own experience, people drive much more defensively in the UK than on the continent, especially in Germany and some southern European countries. There really are a lot of narrow roads there and then there are cars parked everywhere on the road. But the people there are very relaxed about it, you give signs, say thank you when you are let through and there is always a smile and a wave. I've always enjoyed driving there.
8:07 That traffic sign is a warning sign (triangle with pointy side up; yield is pointy side down). It means "you have the right of way but watch out for cross traffic". I see those mostly in rural areas where a farm track might unexpectedly cross a road.
@8:27 it's a "don't yield at the next intersection" sign. you'd have a cross for yield; or no sign at all. yielding for people coming from the right is the default. you have to learn to see the marks on the ground for a stop or yield sign on the road coming on the right you're about to cross; it means you don't have to stop (and you don't see this sign much; more the square priority sign that means "right of way for me from now on")
Europe: this is a pedestrians only area
US: why do they have flower pots on their streets
Their mind would really be blown in southern Spain where you have both. Pedestrian areas that you actually can drive through. Caveat, speed limit is literally walking pace.
@@Tripped11 We just opened up a street to cars. It was only pedestrians before, and worker trucks and stuff. Speed limit is actually slower than walking pace hahaha. Everyone hates it.
@@Tripped11 These areas where cars and pedestrians coexist exist all over Europe.
@@Tripped11 We have those in Germany too, I even live in one. The sign is a large blue square, impossible to miss. What it means is every participant in these streets has equal rights of priority, though right before left still applies.
@@Tripped11 we have have those in the UK
„Those signs“ are international standard, except in the US…
*US, Canada and probably some Caribbean countries too.
This is about NO SIGNS at all. That is where normal traffic rules apply. So coming from the right means you get priority with any form of transport except shoes. Even a toddler on a tricycle from the right has priority.
Also important to mention: right before left applies to every side road, but you only have to stop if there is a vehicel coming. So it isn't the same like at a stop sign..
And de yellow scare sign means Mainroad where you have the right of way. Most time mainroads have also sidewalks and they discontinue at a junction with other mainroads. But at a junction with side roads coming in, the sidewalk is continued. So pedestriens have the right of way if you turn there and cross the sidewalk
Right before left is actually a rule in the US as well, if there is no signage stating otherwise.
Those signs are not international as it's mainly only Europe that uses them. Australia has a mixture of US style and others that are unique.
It doesn't matter what size the Mercedes is....if you're too stupid to adjust the seat and steering wheel properly before driving, you're better off taking the bus. And that he doesn't even manage to park the "too small" car within the lines.....all you need to know about his driving skills.
He's American. You're expecting too much.
And its not even a small Merc. Its a GLA, so a compact SUV (CUV), not like they squeezed them into a VW Up! or something.....
@@TheCloudhopper Sometimes you do get more room in a smaller car, atleast for the front two. Its all in the design.
Adjusting your steering wheel and chair while driving is bonkers. Except when you get fancy electric ones, but even then.
Indeed. He is clueless and dangerous.
If Americans had to get a driver's license according to German rules and regulations, 95% would fail. The American driver's license should not be recognized in Europe if American tourists want to rent a car in Europe.
100% agree. There should be study and test centres situated at rental car agencies in ir near airports. Certain foreign driving licences will be accepted, thoss psople just have to do a couple of hours study on local driving codes and international road signs.
Others will have to take a test and reach a certain standard.
1:29 that "tunnel" in Munich Marienplatz?? - Please don't tell he wants to drive INTO METRO STATION!!!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣
😂😂😂
That would've been so much funnier if they do so and the police officer has to explain to them that they drove into a pedestrian area and tried to go down to a metro station.
The weird thing is that we have to pay 2000 euro at least to get a driver's licence to then share the road with Americans who got their licence for not crashing driving across a car park. That goes for expats too, American driver's licences should simply not be recognized by our governments.
Just a political decision, and has nothing to do with logic unfortunately.
They were one of teh occupation powers for decades, can't just tell the guys with all the soldiers here from a place where you have to go drive everywhere they suck at driving...
Of course that would also result in foreigners not being allowed to drive in USA.
@@walkir2662as an US soldier you have to make a seperate drivers license to be allowed to drive in Europe...when you are stationed there.
@@Phiyedoughthey aren"t (eropeans) without an international drivers license.
The first clip is at Marienplatz in Munich and that is the very center of the pedrestrian area. It is not that easy to enter this area by car. 😀 And the "tunnel" is the entrance to the metro.
I got Google maps out to try to work out how
the f%%¢ they managed to get there.
@@johncrwarner What got me was the asking of "maybe go through the tunnels" WTF? The pedestrian archways?
They enter on the street that takes you at San Peter church
I can tell you where they are trying to get (looking at the satnav...) --> Hofbräuhaus!🤣
Germans seems to manage driving through the pedestrian area in groningen during the bloemetjesmarkt as well 😂 so it's not just Americans not understanding the difference between streets for driving and walking
I just love how its not just "Germans" but literally everyone inlcuding tourists, horses, probably the pidgeons, and even the stone statues and figurines on the Marienplatz in Munich are staring down these trespassers :)
@@schlawa even the flower pot ,,on the road,, 😆
👀 yes, exactly 😅
Like "What the hell are they doing here? 🤔
Let's watch" 👨🦱 🙀 🐶
"oh no, that is so wrong." 🙈
"Oh, wait. maybe, only maybe, these are Americains, you know ? " 😅
They were lucky that the police weren't there starring also, that would have been quite expensive.
@@silsternensandthe police in munich is already too occupied chasing innocent (and legal) weed smokers
@@cantinadudes I know, I'm living in Munich
The thing about „right before left“ is that is applies automatically when there are no signs present.
In Germany (maybe all of Europe I am actually not sure) it works with levels:
1. Policeman
2. Traffic Lights
3. Signs
4. Right before left
Meaning if there are signs and a traffic light then the signs only apply if the traffic is not working. This also means that right before left automatically applies if there is basically nothing, just a bare intersection. This only applies to intersections though and not like driveway exits or something like that. We actually have a right before left sign, but that one is just a reminder and is usually used when it was changed from signs to right before left or if for some reasons people consistently do it wrong at the intersection. That could be if one road are super small and people do not actually realize that it is an intersection.
Yep, that's how it works in Spain as well. Although there are almost always signs where you need to yield, usually painted on the floor. I can't remember a time where I had to apply the "right before left" rule in my area in my year and few months of driving.
I believe the EU works like this: We have the right to drive with a driver's license from one country to another, meaning 99% of the rules/signs are the same or else we couldn't drive.
Not fully true: There kann also be signs for Vorfahrtstraße beforehand, then there do not have to be signs at every crossroad and still rechts-vor-links would not apply. Signs like Vorfahrtstraße have to be explicitly canceled with signs.
@ This still just applies to point 3 signs.
Same order in Italy!
UK driver here! I have a US boyfriend and we visited his folks out of the city by about 90 minutes. I love driving anyway but I enjoyed the challenge of US roads! I'll never forget, we visited an observatory and my boyfriend warned me the road was steep. I started to drive up and said, "Cute, you think this is steep. This is my normal!"
what difference does it make when you drive an automatic anyway?
@valdir7426 Amount of throttle is far more than you need on a manual gearbox to move through the gears.
@@enigmaticspirit08 ok. I've never drive an automatic.
@valdir7426 UK predominantly use manual. US use automatic. I've a manual license so I can drive both.
I never understood why Americans think that "you have to yield to all cars that arrived at the intersection earlier than you" is super easy while "you have to yield to all cars coming from your right" is extremely complex and impossible to do.
It’s not complex, it’s just not the norm so we know most people follow the first rule
@@PepeLaRana1well, in the US we actually do have the same rule as “right before left”.
@@deadrightsadvocate That is in an intersection in which there is a stop sign in both your and the opposite side of you when a car is there, in an all way stop it’s who got there first
@@PepeLaRana1 I am in agreement with you. I was just stating that there is a rule (and it is taught in high school) that you yield to cars on the right. It just doesn’t apply when a car is directly opposite of you as you’re both equally “to the right.”
during driving exams they make sure you encounter one situation like this but in reality it's rare and usually only in urban areas where you're going slow. also more and more you have a signe that explicitely says yield or don't yield (and if not people learn to look at the ground to see stop or yield marks on the adjascent road and know they don't have to yield then)
That UK road wasnt even thin, easily wide enough to be a 2 way road. Its big enough for 1 because the Americans are driving in the middle of the road
Jep, I'm on a roadtrip right now at the Alps, and I can confirm that was hella wide.
It does get sketchy when there is a lot of deadzones because of corners and buildings or mountains and cliffs being on either side so you can't see oncoming traffic and the road is even smaller (like 30% smaller).
Especially on roads like the one I just described where the allowed speed limit is 80kmph, some things get real weird at times.
I especially noticed this in the mountains of Portugal and here in the Alps.
However I've also heard friends say the same about Montenegro and places in that region of the Balkans.
Speeding cars, two-way roads that are the width of a single pickup truck, windy roads with cliffs and rocks on both sides, and invisible zones around basically every corner, oh and people driving crazy speeds for such roads (at times).
Thank god that I've not encountered any Americans so far.
Pretty much. There are thousands of miles of roads in the UK that barely fit one car with no passing spaces. I'd like to see them try and tackle that😂
"This street is only wide enough for one car!"
- an American, as they easily pass parked cars.
I think it is a two way road, just as its in town its one car at a time due to the parked cars.
What scary is when that road doesn't have the cars alongside and is a 60 and other cars are coming the other way!
Yeah, I didn't get what the problem was... That's just a street, not the widest, but far from being thin... just a regular street
I don't understand why in the USA they use Stop-signs everywhere. Here in Finland, and I imagine in most of Europe, the default and mostly used sign is the Yield or Give way sign when you have to give way to traffic on a bigger or more important street/road. A stop sign is here used only when the intersection is for some reason more risky or dangerous, because a stop sign means that you always have to completely stop your vehicle before continuing, which you don't have to do with a yield sign. In most cases the yield sign is adequate.
yeah and I think she was misinterpreting the give way sign as if it was a stop sign
In UK stop signs do exist but are very rare. Usually it is a give way sign so you can keep moving if there is no other traffic.
Yes, the stop signs in the US are a pest. And most ridiculous is when they have 4 stop signs on a intersection. Then the one with the most expensive car can go first... :)
@@petebeatministerThat's almost like: who can honk loudest may go first...
it's so people don't have to think for themselves.
a stop sign tells you to stop, no thinking necessary.
at a yield sign the driver has to look around and decide/judge if he can go or if he has to let someone else go first, this often includes negotiation with other road users.
7:36 tbh she's doing it wrong... the "priority to the right" is common all over Europe, in France it's "priorité à droite" and NO, you DON'T have to stop at any crossing where there is a road to the right, you just need to slow down and be carefull because IF there is a car coming from that right street, you HAVE to let them pass. but it's NOT a stop sign, more like a "gives way" but only to the right street. it's also the default rule for any unmarked crossings. The triangular sign she show indicate that YOUR road is the one that have priority, so it overule the "priority to the right" rule.
She litteraly never stopped on the video. She does it right
@@quencre well if she isn't stopping, she stomp on the brakes, that indicate a clear lack of anticipation that's not only bad for the passengers, it's also bad for the car. She just had to crawl through the street while being carefull of the intersections, putting your passenger head in the dashboard at each crossing was unecessary
@@XxJay71xX did you watch the video or what ? It's clear that it's the husband who is exaggerating his reactions, since she does not move. Yes, she brakes, which is what you have to do for a right of way. No problem with anticipation. She does it well
@@XxJay71xX while everything you said is truth from the perspective of how poeple should go about the "piority to the right", you lacking the obsevartion skill to understand the husband was clearly exagerating and she didnt break that hard at all...
while you dont have any visibility to the right you are expected to slow down, the husband isnt use to that so he exagerate higly his reaction everytime she slow down a bit... ou can tell by the fact the girl barely move and by how the background move.
9:50 she shouldn't stop, just really slow down in case she had to stop. When you have to give priority to the traffic comin from your right, you don't have to stop unless someone comin, just slow down, watch, and repeat until you don't have to yield
Yea we have the same rule here in Sweden and I know Norway has the same and it's basically slow down so you can stop if someone comes from the right so stopping is not necessary. In Sweden its called Höger regeln that translates into the right rule and it's there to give better traffic flow and the whole idea is gone if you keep stopping if there are no traffic😅
I assume she stopped because there was actually traffic from the right. Can't imagine a German to stop for no reason 😉
Probably just exaggerating for the video. Would make for a a lot more boring video if she just told him that you have to give way for anyone coming from your right.
The fun thing is the European signs are all very similar
largely because they are all signatories to the
1968 Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals
Knowing these helps a lot in driving in another country.
It makes is very uniform and easy to drive all over Europe without reading up on every countries signs for sure! But you still find the odd ones that you just go "I wonder wtf that means". You might get some clues, like the shape and colour of the sign. But yeah, there are some rather odd ones that are VERY location specific. I personally love the "warning for [insert animal]". In my country we just use the deer one for all larger animals, but you can find signs with a cow, group of ducks, sheep, moose and yes, reindeer, on them. There are probably more like that. I also enjoy finding the ones letting me if there might be visably impaired or hard of hearing ppl in the area. Might sound stupid but it's good to know they might fiddle around at the crosswalk, not hear you as you drive up the the crosswalk or what not. That gives me as a driver the heads up that hey, you might need to stop a little longer here or just be more aware of what's going on around you. And that's great! Lowers the level of annoyance as you know WHY it might take them an extra 5 seconds to cross the road instead of just thinking they are stupid or something. The fact that someone who can't see at all can make their way through town without someone guiding them is amazing and so, so cool! :)
The signs are basically the same all around the world with the exception of the US. They might look slightly different, but they all mean the same.
@@cayreet5992 The US and a few other anglosphere countries. But, yes, otherwise they're fairly universal with some local variance or additional signs.
3:20 the „tunnel“ is actually the entrance into the subway. Wish they had taken that route.
Reminds me of a Incident in Bavaria where a BMW Driver mistook the CLEARLY Marked Metro-Entrance (Ubahn) for a parking garage lmao
Don't drive to the tunnel! These are the stairs down to the subway 😂
that would complete the "amercian was here" picture though
By tunnel, didn't they mean the passage in front of the Beck, past the toy museum? On their right side? The statement about the “flower pot in the middle of the street” also makes more sense. The entrance to the underground is facing away from the street.
Well, some Chinese tourists actually drove down those stairs to the subway.
The Griswolds 🤣
@@thebamplayer I always wondered how people ended up in those situations and I guess it is just wilful ignorance. The driver just kept repeating it was all fine when it clearly wasn't. How do people ignore reality that willingly?
@10:00 she's braking quite abruptly for the crossings, but it's not mandatory to stop as at a stop sign so if you scan the road and adapt your speed you can cruise them quite comfortably. Also in the Netherlands, cyclists have right of way too. Nowadays most of thise areas have a 30 kmh limit anyway.
The weirdest part for me in Rechts vor Links guy is that he as a passenger is stressed by the road sign. Like, somebody forgot to tell the bro he's not a driver
"it's not mandatory to stop as at a stop sign so if you scan the road and adapt your speed you can cruise them quite comfortably" I don't know where you're from but it IS absolutely mandatory to stop at a stop sign here in France; and the rule is to wait for at least 3 seconds. you're mixing up with the yield sign. In this situation where there is no sign she just has to yield not stop. big difference.
@@ldmtag there's no road sign.
@valdir7426 read again mate 😉 I wrote...not mandatory to stop AS at a stop sign. Stop sign means you have to halt no matter what, I think that's the only sign that's quite clear throughout the world 😄
@@eelco1982 ok sorry I did missred
14:37 I am Swedish and that sign is obviously fake and a joke. The only place in Europe you would find names like this is Wales, written in welsh letters even.
I personally believe Americans should get a driving test. When's draving in the UK, the amount of Americans killing civilians from American bases in the uk is ridiculous.
How many is it?
@@PedroConejo1939 I know of at least 5 in the last 6 years. And the latest one is of Anne Sacoolas crashed into Harry Dunn and killed him but was initially granted diplomatic immunity Then she flew back to america on the same day
@@JonnyVision88 It's always good to have an idea of the numbers involved. No US bases near here, so it doesn't make the news.
@@JonnyVision88What makes it worse is that she initially agreed to cooperate witht he place but because her husband was a member of 'American intelligence' she skipped across thr pond and even Trump refused to help the Dunn familtly get closure!
Turned out she was actually a spook too, she outranked her husband.
There is a very serious downside to this. Here in the U.K. an American woman left an air force base and started driving on the wrong side of the road. She a motorcyclist killing him. She fled the scene and left the country. She claimed diplomatic immunity and has refused to return to this country for the Coroners inquest.
Almost the same thing happened in Italy, a woman from the USAF base was driving under the influence of alcohol and killed a 15 years old guy, at the moment the sentence was suspended. The aggravating circumstance of drunk driving was not recognized since the alcohol test, which had given a positive result, had been carried out more than two hours after the accident. Even will be confirmed, the sentence was 2 years and 6 months, too little for someone to take the life of other people
The thing is, she NEVER had diplomatic immunity. When the parents of the boy she killed went to the US to try and seek justice, they were blind-sided by Trump himself, in the White House, to try and let her meet and give them an apology, without returning for trial.
@@marco_grt4460 But here in the UK the perpetrator was flown out, on a scheduled USAF flight, by the US State Department. Without telling anyone that she was a senior CIA officer.
@@wessexdruid7598 that's sucks
@@marco_grt4460 It's the US further making the statement that they don't have to obey our laws.
In London, there is a congestion charge to enter. Currently the USA owes £14M in unpaid charges for their Embassy. It's a power play.
The female driving over the bridge in Ireland, the yellow barrier is a height barrier so larger high vehicles such as delivery vans, Lorries and buses can’t cross the bridge
That is a woman. Female is from and for the animal kingdom.
They can also be found here in Germany, mostly on old bridges that are not suitable for today's heavy traffic (buses, lorries, etc.).
@@kiliipower355 And every month or two an idiot ignores it and gets stuck damaging the bridge -.-
There's an advert on TV here in Norway, where there's a pair of Swedes (always the butts our jokes, and we're the butt of theirs, it's all good) in a lorry, who come up to a hight marker for a bridge and one says to the other "Ser du nån polis?/Do you see any cops?", and then they just go, and the ad cuts to a black screen as they smash into the bridge. It's very funny! Don't remember what it's for tho..
@@malinrnningen9357
Hmmm, let me guess! Car insurance?😂
In France we never have 4 way stop signs intersections. Either one road has priority over the other (with yield sings and ground markings on the non priority road) or it's priority to cars coming from the right. Stop signs will typically be used instead of a yield sign if the intersection is dangerous (obstructed visibility for example).
The logic behind priority to cars coming from your right is:
- you can always turn right without yielding (you have priority over the cars coming from the left and cars coming from the front making a left turn)
- if you go straight, there is only one side you need to yield to.
- it's the default rule when there are no signage, so cheap
Why would you want more stop signs? Yielding is so much nicer as you don't have to stop when there is no one to yield to, only slow down. Unnecessary stop signs are probably a big factor in people running them and causing accidents.
we already have roundabouts for those kind of intersections; far safer
@@valdir7426 roundabouts require more space. There are used a lot but mostly for medium trafic intersections outside of compact citie areas. For very small traffic intersection (like residents only), where you would find a 4 way stop signs in the USA, priority to trafic coming from the left does the job very well for the cheapest price.
6:05 People from the Netherlands are the tallest in the world (on average) and small European cars don't seem to be too much of a problem for them. I suspect this gentleman didn't adjust his seat properly, he didn't push it back enough, and that's why his knees are nearly hitting the wheel.
8:15 road signs are the same all over outside the US, and they're like that (hardly any writing) because no matter what language you speak, you can understand them, as they're just images and mean the same everywhere. The shape and colour of the signs have different meanings: the triangle ones are "warning/danger" signs. Round signs with a blue background are "mandatory" actions, round ones with red outlines are "forbidden" actions, and square ones are "informative". The two exceptions are the Yield sign, which is an inverted triangle, and the Stop sign, an octagon. Both these signs have particular shapes so they can be recognized even when you see them from the back. The one at 8:30 is a "right of way" at a crossroads sign.
There's a reason why drivers' licenses in Europe (and in many other places) require you to go through an official test (where I'm from it's on two parts, first you do a Q&A written test, and then a driving test). You need to know what you're doing while controlling a machine than can kill not only you, but other people who aren't inside it.
8:57 The yield signs in Gerany are IMPORTANT. Ignore them, and you've got a decent chance of having an accident. People on a road with that sign will not look, they will expect to have right of way, and will enter the crossing at full speed without lookng, as for them the other roads do not exist while they have right of way. Vorfahrt (right of way) is holy in Germany.
Also see how she keeps her eyes glue to the road almost constantly and never lets go of the steering wheel? That's what Germans learn. Anything else is very dangerous on German roads, as people are expected to adher to the road rules. There are tons of road signs, and every one is important.
Yeah! same way here in Belgium.
@@yqz251 yes but it looked like she always did a full stop at those intersection. AFAIK here in belgium if you can see that the incomming road i clear you dont need to stop or even slow down. Depending on your vision of that road ofcourse
That could amount to careless driving in the UK if there was an accident. UK drivers are taught to take care at crossings in case someone pulls out without looking properly.
Not just Germany, but the entirety of Europe
I ride a motorbike, so even on priority roads I always expect to be overlooked by cars coming from the right. If I end up having "he had right of way" chiselled on my gravestone, I won't get anything out of it either.
A friend of mine has an American wife. When she came to the UK she had to take a UK driving test after 6 months residence - she failed the test 6 times for failing to stop and give way entering a roundabout on a dual carriageway road. ……………. On the 7th fail she didn’t realise/ see that there had been traffic lights installed on that roundabout and not only did she still drive straight through onto the roundabout but she also got a ticket in the post a few weeks later because the new traffic lights have red light cameras on them! She gave up trying to get her UK license and gets driven around everywhere now.
You have to question the intelligence of your friend, he picked a very dumb wife. Driving a car and taking a test CANNOT be that hard. If it's that complicated to drive in the UK compared to the rest of the world something is very wrong in the UK.
@karlbmiles yep. 100% down to the wife's intelligence. That's just embarrassing
I feel like adding traffic lights to a roundabout kind of defeats the purpose of a roundabout in the first place, though. The entire point is for traffic to remain organised and safe without having to stop.
@@Lewtable True... But then you have some American who just doesn't get it, you give up and put up a traffic light 😉🤣
@@karlbmiles Are you telling him to divorce his wife?
11:37 Nah! That's not narrow, plenty of room for two cars. Wait till you get to the lanes where you are brushing through hedgerow on either side of your car!
And typically a 60 mph speed limit
My mam lost a wing mirror to a hawthorne bush on a country road once
And going 60mph even at night, my friends American cousin was terrified and said we drive crazy in this country. 😂
@@waynelowe3329 Much easier at night as you can see the headlights of any oncoming cars.
@@lottie2525 But you can't see the unlit horses, cows, and sheep that have escaped from their fields until it is too late.
Bridge at 13:00 is in Donegal, Ireland. Just outside Ballybofey. It’s one way. Yield to oncoming. First on has right of way. Yellow bar is height restrictions.
German driver here and I have to say, driving in the UK sounded way worse than it actually was in the end.
Drove several times, with an camper van trough the windy Scottish highlands, rented car through the English tight city streets and the Welsh countryside.
But I do recommend anyone to drive a car with the steering on the right side. It is way easier for turns and you will not have any hassle with toll booths or ticket automation like that. You also remember to turn into the correct lane there as well. Additionally, if you get your car from Sixt, you will not have any big advertisement on the car, so you will look live a native as well and not get hassled. The only time I admittedly struggled was leaving a small country road and naturally turning into the wrong lane in a (empty) two lane road...yikes. Realized it right ahead and quickly left the wrong lane...so...yeah, all fine in the end.
Oh and driving in the southern part of Italy, you start to feel your inner Mussolini awakening and beginn winking 🤌 shouting and honking like the rest of the bunch till you arrived. Seeing that, how they once controlled most of the ancient world at one point still eludes me ^^
An advantage of having your own car with the steering wheel on the left, is that everyone can see you are a foreigner. People are more patient with you. Your licence plate is like a warning sign. If you drive a UK car nobody knows you might be struggling a bit.
Yielding being commonplace also makes the roads and sidewalks a lot safer for pedestrians. It keeps drivers more alert and ready to respond to people on foot or bikes.
Where I live there are many "right has priority on left" roads, hidden in-between some brick-buildings!
So many people driving here for the first time, don't see the priority road hidden in-between buildings, there are zero signs to warn them from the priority roads presence, etc ... The only option to know that road is there, is to put on your GPS map to have a top-view of the area...
The "rechts vor links" rule has caused more accidents here, than it has prevented! Yes also with pedestrians and cyclists!
So in my opinion, it's the most idiotic road-rule known to mankind!
@@timmy7201 That sounds more of a driver issue than a fault with the rule. It's should be impossible for any halfway alert driver to miss the presence of a crossing road. Even in areas where you can't see far ahead you will always easily spot a crossing. You may not be able to have a good view onto the other road and need to proceed slowly and carefully, but missing the road entirely? Naw, I call BS on that. Plus these areas tend to be residential which means reduced speedlimits so even if you don't have good visibility into the crossing road to see if traffic is approaching you should be slow enough to react (to equally slow incoming traffic) and thus easily prevent an incident.
Just gotta pay the minimum of attention and there's no road that will surprise you. Maybe they should spend less time looking at their navigation display and more time watching where they're driving.
I've seen some old cities that survived from medieval time with roads that are barely wide enough for a car and roads that cross in such tightly build areas that it's basically impossible to look into the incoming road until you're halfway across (though they usually installed mirrors to give people a line of sight and see if someone is approaching), but you will NEVER not see the road itself if you just look ahead to where you're driving. If people have trouble spotting crossings they need to check their eyesight and are probably unfit to drive.
@@timmy7201 Or the driver could just open their eyes and concentrate on their surroundings and not let themselves be distracted by things in the car...
@@bramscheDave It's easy to blame the driver, if you haven't seen the actual issue I refer to in reality...
The problem usually occurs, when there is a combination of:
- You're on a narrow road, that bends slightly to the right, hiding any intersection at the right behind the walls
- There is a priority road from the right, that intersects your road in an 80 degree angle or less, hiding it even more
- The road you're driving on has a small or no sidewalk, putting you less than a meter from the buildings beside the road
- All buildings on the side are build using the same material and/or color, especially red/orange brick buildings
- The speed limit is 50 km/h (31 mph), but accidents even happen in roads with a 30 km/h limit (18.6 mph).
- There is zero indication that there is an intersection ahead, no signs or road markings
It's especially with the red/orange brick buildings that I notice many accidents in my area, the little brick stones with the mortar lines ruin many peoples depth of sight. Or sometimes the road is wide enough to see the intersection, yet it's hidden away by someone who parked their large car / truck right in front of the intersection. There are often even cyclists who can't stop in time for priority traffic from their right, forget about cars being able to stop...
@@Aotearas It's easy to blame the driver, if you haven't seen the actual issue I refer to in reality...
The problem usually occurs, when there is a combination of:
- You're on a narrow road, that bends slightly to the right, hiding any intersection at the right behind the walls
- There is a priority road from the right, that intersects your road in an 80 degree angle or less, hiding it even more
- The road you're driving on has a small or no sidewalk, putting you less than a meter from the buildings beside the road
- All buildings on the side are build using the same material and/or color, especially red/orange brick buildings
- The speed limit is 50 km/h (31 mph), but accidents even happen in roads with a 30 km/h limit (18.6 mph).
- There is zero indication that there is an intersection ahead, no signs or road markings
It's especially with the red/orange brick buildings that I notice many accidents in my area, the little brick stones with the mortar lines ruin many peoples depth of sight. Or sometimes the road is wide enough to see the intersection, yet it's hidden away by someone who parked their large car / truck right in front of the intersection. There are often even cyclists who can't stop in time for priority traffic from their right, forget about cars being able to stop...
In the Campsie Hills north of Glasgow there is a bend in the road so many American tourists drive off into the drainage ditch, the locals call it Yankee Corner.
😅
L❤v it
🤦♂😂😂😂
Given how ridiculously easy it is to get a license in the US and the fact that it seems most americans consider driving a right rather than a privilege, Im actually baffled that they are allowed to come over here and just go driving, no checks whatsoever to make sure they actually know what they're doing and have atleast some grasp of our rules, signs etc..
Yes! In these sort of clips, they always blame someone else. "I feel unsafe, why did someone else build the roads like this instead?"
If you genuinely don't feel safe driving, stop driving and turn off the car! You don't have any right to put people at risk.
It's like they think there's a natural right to drive, and they should only stop if something prevents them. No, it's the other way round: you naturally shouldn't drive, but you can do so if you feel safe and comfortable that you know what you are doing.
One of the first things told when trying to get a license is that it’s a privilege that the state can take away for misconduct
1:43 They don't even question why there's no other cars or roadsigns 😂.
The signs used in Europe are actually quite straightforward, and come in four categories - with some exceptions:
1) White triangle with a red border, pointing up: warning
2) White circle with a red border: prohibition (maximum speed, max height, etc)
3) Solid blue circle: command (minimum speed, cycle lane, pedestrian zone, etc)
4) Solid blue rectangular: informative (speed advice, one way, car park, etc)
Exceptions include the octagonal stop sign (same as in the USA), solid red circle with a horizontal white stripe (no entry, one way street), solid blue with a red border (having to do with parking), solid light grey circle with diagonal stripes (end of all prohibitions), white triangle with a red border, pointing down (yield), and the square at a 45 degree angle with a thick white border, and either a yellow or orange centre (you have the right of way).
It's not uniformly consistent: the sign for cycle lane or pedestrian zone implicitly means that you can't drive a car there, but it's not explicitly indicated by a white circle with a red border. The reason why it's a command is because it's not optional for a bicycle to ride on the path: if there's a sign for a path, you're not allowed on the main road. Also, the blue rectangular sign informing you of an incoming zebra crossing (crosswalk in the USA) implies that you _must_ stop at the crossing.
In Northern Europe and mountainous areas, where they get a lot of snow, the white may be replaced by yellow, for increased visibility.
The sign shown from 8:07 onward means 'careful, there's an intersection coming, but you have the right of way'.
What's on the signs can differ from one country to the next. If you drive in a forested area, you may see triangular sign with a deer, which means 'crossing wildlife' (which could also be boars, or other animals). Where I live, they have rather endearing signs for crossing cats and hedgehogs.
Maybe if Americans had proper diving lessons and tests to begin with, they wouldn't be such terrible drivers in the first place.
OK it's strange at first driving on the other side of the road (although many British/Irish drivers manage it), but driving on the side you're used to (95% of Europe) shouldn't be a problem.
There's an ongoing case of an American woman who killed a British person, by driving on the wrong side of the road. It's not all a joke.
Yes, she flew back to the states to escape charges, she was the wife of an American serviceman stationed over here.
@@applecider7307She claimed diplomatic immunity. That made the case even more controversial...
One of the biggest problems is that they don't use the standard road signs that are the norm pretty much anywhere else in the world.
They should really at least be educated on that if they want to drive here.
Matthew Broderick killed 2 women in Northern Ireland for the same reason and he’s all free and happy 🤷🏻♂️
@@applecider7307 And obviously the US government refused to extradite her so she could face trial for killing someone. It makes me wonder how many criminals have been extradited from the USA to the UK against how many have been extradited from the UK to the US?
As an experienced driver on the right side of the road, when I drove for the first time in UK I was following a simple rule in order to keep the correct lane: the steering wheel must be close to the middle of the road.
And the car is not too small, he didn’t configure the steering wheel and the seat.
The times I've visited left side driving countries, I haven't dared to drive.
But I've had colleagues that said it wasn't that difficult to get used to...
But I mean... my routine would tell me a right turn is kinda trivial. And while the gear stick is to the other side, your pedals are where you're used to... that part isn't mirrored..
Nah, I'm good, I don't need to try.
@@BenjaminVestergaard I have been driven a rhd car here in Norway. A bit strange at first, but no problem. Never driven in UK tho', unless big cities I think it would be fairly easy. Just remember to have the steering wheel close to center line and it should work ok.
Being used to driving/cycling on the right, I made the mistake on my first left turn on my first bike ride in UK age 18. Even though I had contemplated beforehand that it should be easy. - Never happened again, but it takes some getting used to...
I live in the UK, and the only time I have had difficulty driving in Europe, outside The British Isles, is when I have taken my own right hand drive car. You are right. When I rent a car in France, for example, the inside of the care reflects the driving environment and it is hard to go on to the wrong carriageway. Obviously, for about thirty minutes, you whack your hand on the door reaching for the gear stick a few times, but other than that it is quick and easy to adapt.
An American woman hired a car in Newcastle, and phoned our garage in Edinburgh complaining the car was very slow and very noisy, turns out she thought she had hired an automatic, it wasn't, and the gearbox was virtually solid.
American:
"1st gear is drive right, and gear 2 is reverse?... See I know what I'm talking about"...
That's so funny but obvious once you realise an American is driving 😂
Driven from Newcastle to Edinburgh all the way in first gear. "Yeah, it's got a nice infotainment system, but it won't go over ten miles per hour" 🤨
😨
Sounds like a bs story - she would have had to use the clutch to get it in first gear, and not stall it, so if she could do all that, she still thought it was automatic????
All those signs are international standard, I'm not German and I know what it means because it's an international standard... and it's quite easy to know when you have right of way or not:
a) If no sign exists, it's right before left as she said, it's an international standard, if someone is on my right then they have the right of way (when there's no signs!!!). Goes for all kinds of vehicles except animal traction vehicles (even if they are on the right they don't have right of way).
b) If there's a sign to give right of way (like the triangle one with the black arrow with crossings - be it exactly that one or derivates) then the other roads crossing this one will have a sign informing they don't have the right of way and/or they'll have a stop sign at the crossing (an octogonal sign, unmistakable for both those in that lane as well as for those on the road crossing that one, so I'll know you don't have right of way because I can see, unmistakably, your stop sign... it's the only octogonal sign for a reason: it stands out like a sore thumb).
Four exceptions to the right before left rule:
1) Roundabouts. No one outside of the roundabout has right of way over those inside the roundabout, even thou they clearly are on the right of those inside the roundabout. EDIT: this is not a true exception per se, as there's need to be a roundabout sign to make it so and give right of way to those inside... because without the roundabout sign it isn't a roundabout, it's a plaza, and everyone inside it loses right of way to those on the right.
2) When coming out of a train crossing, there's never right before left for the car crossing the train tracks, even if he's on the left he has priority, always! The one coming out from the train track has always (always!) right of way.
3) Military columns (of cars) and police escorts have right of way.
4) Vehicles on tracks (like trams) have right of way.
EDIT: so yeah, I think true exceptions are the last 3, the roundabout one isn't a true exception as it's only a roundabout when there's the roundabout sign (else it's a plaza and right before left or sign rules aplies), and so it falls into either the a) or b) situations mentioned above, depending if it has the sign or not.
10:27 That's not even a narrow one... say like the one outside my house, where there really isn't space for two cars to pass. And despite this, the speed limit is a mere 60 mph.
In the last clip, the American did not fail a driving test, she failed a mock driving test. You cannot video a driving test in the UK.
It's not a driving test. It's a driving lesson and it's not fake, you can find other of the monitor's video
@@quencreare u able to read?
@@quencrenobody said it was fake
You can technically record a driving test with the permission of the examiner, only showing the road, not the examiner and no voice recording if I'm not mistaken. Of course this one is just a mock test or a lesson but the driving instructor put it on the Internet with that caption to get reactions.
The Mercedes was a GLA which is the smallest SUV Mercedes is offering. However you still should be able to sit comfortably in it if you adjust your seat unless you‘re like 2 meters or bigger.
Regarding the ‚rechts vor links‘ video: at every intersection without a traffic sign you have to yield for cars coming from your right hand side.
The triangle sign with the arrow in it means you have the right of way for only the next intersection while the white square with the yellow square in it means that you have the right of way for the whole street you‘re driving on.
basically a tall A-class
@sebsch1858 We have right of way signs and also "give way to oncoming traffic " signs as well, in the UK, but we also have a basic rule about who gives way to whom at a junction. Generally, if we approach another vehicle from the right, we have the priority. This works fairly well unless three cars arrive at a three-street junction, such that everyone is on someone's right!
@@charleshayes2528 same in Germany. For the stated situation you have to arrange yourself with the other drivers on who goes first. After that we‘re back to ‚rechts vor links‘. At least that‘s how it‘s done in Germany.
couldn't find buttons on side of seat to adust position
@@robgraham9234 for a rental GLA it‘s likely to be a manual seat adjustment. There should be a handle at the front of the seat to move it back or forth. Height adjustment should be a pump handle at the side of the seat
"Rechts vor Links": if there are no traffic signs on the road (usually in remote country areas) at a crossroads, you give way to any car coming from your right. In Dutch, it's called "voorrang van rechts" in French, it's called "priorité de droite". This is a kind of "default" rule if no other traffic signalling is available.
Not specifically in remote country areas, also in cities, especially with streets not created for through traffic. In rural areas their are usually actually more signs.
Precedenza a destra, in Italy.
yeah but you don't have to stop everytime if you see that noones is coming from the right. She is misinterpreting the sign as a stop sign
@@diegodessy9700 It looks like she isn't actually stopping but just slowing way down, I assume because the visibility is very limited along the road from the right. He's just saying she's stopping cause that's the way americans "stop" at stop signs - rolling stops.
@@diegodessy9700It depends on visibility at the crossroads. We don't see what she's seeing and she is driving a RHD car making angles even more accute.
8:55 -ish. That's a "Don't yield" sign actually. (I don't know if that was posted before)
The largest line is the line with the priority, and the thinner one is the one that has to give way (or even have a stop signal/sign).
It is only use when the normal rule of "right of way" (or the way on the right has the priority over you) doesn't apply.
Triangle pointing up signs with red out line are for danger, but this one is more to warn you that you don't have to yield on the next crossing. It could be dangerous to slow down, or even stop here, as it is mostly used when you drive quite fast, or when the visibility is low, with an important traffic.
The sign at 8:31 is a "right of way" sign, meaning that you have the right of way for just this one intersection. There is a sign for "primary road" also that gives you the right of way on any intersection on this road until the sign is cancelled.The Yield sign you mentioned is mounted with the point down, not up, and that we also have here in Germany. When no signs exist, then the rule "Rechts vor Links" (right before left) applies: the car coming from your right has the right of way, the car coming from your left has to yield. Size and type of road or street don't matter.
Something I've wondered about for a while now just clicked: whenever I see videos from the USA I feel like it's always flat. That's obviously not true for the entire country. But maybe it's not just the topography being flat or hilly - but it's the layout of cities and suburbs. It seems like in the US there are mostly trimmed flat frontyards, the houses are the only things sticking out. Or everything is a flat parking lot, just the buildings sticking out. and the advertisements. The video from the UK just demonstrated that there are a lot of walls or bushes and flowerpots along the streets. It's more multilayered somehow. Do I make sense?
Yeah, I also wonder why they have these boring front yards, grass and a tree or two. Why not have bushes to fence in your property, some berry bushes and a few nut trees and or apple, pear etc. With these additions more birds would come and bring joy (except maybe not due to the many free roaming cats they seem to have). Several decades ago I drove around USA with some friends in a car and were in more different states than most Americans visit during a lifetime. Nature could change but it were the same chains and the same layouts almost everywhere. They say they are free and have "choices" but it´s more uniformed than most dictatorships when it really comes down to it. We had two very unpleasant encounters with police along the route and they demonstrated shocking behaviour that clearly were overstepping their boundaries. It got fully cured of any thoughts of moving to USA during those 3 months. We heard multiple gunshots while driving in 3 different cities. I have since visited at least 40 other nations and never heard a single gunshot fired anywhere else.
Yea you’re pretty spot on. There are hilly areas/cities in the U.S. sure, but it’s more rare.
One example I have is somewhere I’ve lived.. I lived a couple years in the Las Cruces/El Paso area (Texas/New Mexico border) and it’s one of the more hilly/mountainous cities in the country, various curvy hilly roads that are beautiful, but two things seem consistent with US cities.. the downtown was mostly flat and the suburbs/neighborhoods were mostly flat. Our house was surrounded by natural desert and sand dunes.. but the neighborhood had been obviously flattened when constructed and everyone had basically flat yards. (No grass in New Mexico though)
I notice cities, roads and so on basically follow the natural topography in various European roads and settlements. I admire that, it seems more natural and aesthetic that way
A lot of times, this is done on purpose.
A physical barrier like walls, bushes, or trees, along the narrow roads, help discourage speeding, forcing drivers to pay more attention to the road.
In cities in the Netherlands, lots of green is often used to make city centres more inviting for pedestrians and cyclists.
But it's also used as a natural way to cool down.
13:10 That's a height restriction. If you can't fit through that, you won't fit through the reason for that height restriction.
Reminds me of the 11 foot 8 bridge which is ironically in the us
was about to say that as well... it is a height restriction sign with a mount that restricts the height of the car and you should hear it in case you are too high
An American in Luxembourg once told me he had taken his hire car to 230 on the autoroute.
When I told him, if caught he'd get a hefty fine. He replied ' It wouldn't be so bad, we checked and 230 is just over the speed limit.'
He knew the car speedometer was in kph, but for some reason thought the autoroute speed limit of 130 was in mph, like in the U.S.A.
He was doing 143m.p.h., close to double the speed limit.🙄
In Norway he would've gone to prison...
In Slovenia the car would be taken away by the police and he would receive a hefty fine after appearing in front of a judge. Besides, how did he assume that the speed limit was in mph if the speedometer is in kph?! This is really dumb 😂
Even if he did not figure out that the speedometer and the speed limit signs would logically be in the same units did he really think 130 mph could be feasible as a speed limit?
If he drove double the speed or more than 200 km/h on the highway in Denmark.
He would get a big fine, loose the driving license in Denmark for 3 years, get 20 days in prison and get the car confiscated.. and it would be sold on an auction.
Wow.. that’s a big YIKES 😅
In sweden, any intersection that's not on a marked mainroad or highway and it's not marked with a yield sign on the joining road you have the "right-rule" where you always have to yield to any traffic from your right
15:43 To be honest the marking on the ground is confusing because she had to pass a continous white line which here in Belgium would also be a fail.
I remember when getting my Canadian Forces Europe licence to replace my Canadian licence back in the late '80s, we had to attend some classroom sessions and pass a written test. The instructor place a lot of emphasis on the "right has priority on left" rule (rechts vor links) and priority roads. Most of the accidents that Canadian military members and their dependents got into when first starting to drive in Germany was mistakenly believing they had priority for going through an intersection on small city streets.
About that commenter on the first video who said "I can't believe they made it that far without being stopped." There's only so much random bystanders can do if the 3 people in the vehicle just don't get the hint when they get "Are you seriously going to do this?!?" stares from a whole restaurant patio full of people.
Would've been better if they did what people at a market near me did when a car decided to ignore all signs blocking cars from entering, riding into a street filled with market stalls and pedestrians.
They swarmed the car, banged on the doors and roof, and forced the driver to go back.
I would approach the car and politely inform them that they were in a pedestrian only area and the quickest way out. I wouldn’t do it in Germany though unless it was obvious they were anglophones because I don’t speak German
@@jeremypnet Why would a German ignore all the signs and drive into a pedestrian only zone, though?
@ firstly, languages of the World don’t divide into English and German. The driver could be from some other country.
Secondly, there’s no reason why all Germans couldn’t be stupid enough to drive into a pedestrian zone
@@jeremypnet You mentioned you don't speak Germany. And Germany. Not that strange to come to the conclusion that you might be talking about Germans speaking German in Germany, not Austrians speaking German in Germany.
Those English lanes were WIDE!! Try driving through places like Cornwall and Wales and the Scottish Highlands, where you are an inch from the verge on either side of the road, and the cow parsley grows so far out into the road it looks like it's a foot wide, and yes, I'm used to roads like these! lol
Also the speed limit is usually 60mph
Try one lane road on city center in France it’s no better
Not been on country lanes near Dartmoor then. One narrow car wide with plants growing in the middle of the lane. Also Devon banks which are made of stones and earth topped with a hedge. Which grows out during the summer making them even more narrow.
@@susanwestern6434 Yeah the walls with a bit of soil and a hedge on top is called a 'Cornish Hedge'. Make no mistake, those 'hedges' will turn your car to scrap metal with no warning if you aren't careful! The most amazing thing I ever saw was one day trip from uni, we were in a 52 seater coach driving down those lanes like he was driving a mini on the motorway! Equal parts terrifying and impressive!
these pedestrian areas are so clearly signed and difficult to get into, i am baffled how they thought it was a road for cars
White triangles with red borders are warnings. White circles with red borders are instructions. Blue circles with white borders are requirements.
To memorize:
red A: attention!
red O: obligation (like max. speed...)
@@la-go-xy Round 'n red, don't do that, round 'n blue is what you do.
@@la-go-xy No really, red ⭕generally mean prohibition, obligation are blue 🔵 they're normally called mandatory signs.
@@automation7295 bit tricky as a non-english speaker:
It should say restriction/limitation, order/obligation not to exceed...
True, the blue O is an order to do something.
Blue squares: advice
Honestly, the little British road is a common rural route. This road is probably much older than the United States. We also have roads that date back to the Roman Empire. I think American interchanges on 8-lane highways are much scarier.
Agreed. German here. The narrow roads are normal in any rural European town. You just have to be on the watch and always know what kind of traffic to expect from the opposite side. Once in a while, you have to stop to let others through, at others, the opposite party will clearly stop to let you through (depending on which side of the road cars are parked - the one on the side of no parked car having the right to go first). It‘s really NOT rocket science!
Not only are narrow roads more common here, they're also safer.
This is why many Dutch cities have narrowed a lot of their roads, as it discourages speeding, and forces drivers to pay attention to their surroundings.
Roads in the US are designed for cars. Roads in many parts of Europe and UK are not. They can be thousands of years old, they were pathways for walking or riding a horse or a small cart pulled by a horse. Adapting them for cars means people need to use common sense as well as know the rules, written and unwritten. Don’t drive in Europe until you have become used to how things work! It’s like Europeans visiting America who think they can walk to the shops, something they do frequently back home.
13:24 "can opener ahead" similar to the 11'8" bridge,
+4”!
4:00 European cities can have these areas start right next to roads and some sidewalks are the same level as the road with very few poles or pots or whatever to divide it. We also don't spam our cities with police.
We just assume people know the rules.
Not excusing these people, just saying it's actually pretty easy to reach these areas by car, even though you're not supposed to.
2:00 well, 60 years ago this was the busiest street for car traffic in whole Munich. But what happened, they set their navigation into Pedestrian mode.
And the cars SatNav is taking them that way… ( Ped mode? )
But don't you have to set you GPS to pedetrian mode if you want to drive there? You asking ... ( and kidding)
The first one is impressive. There are side streets you can use to get onto the pedestrian area, but it's hard not to notice you're entering the pedestrian area. I'm sad they didn't try the tunnel - that's the entrance of the Marienplatz metro.
The Marienplatz adventure leaves me flabbergasted. You will see cars there, but these cars will be delivery vans for the businesses, ambulances or vans for transporting handicapped people. I admittedly haven't walked every street leading to the square but I'm still pretty sure you cannot get there without running a "no vehicles" sign.
As for the "right before left" sign, it is actually a blessing. I used to live in the middle of a 20 block area that had no stop or yield signs. Having to slow down and give way to anyone approaching from the right every 100 m or so helps make sure that you'll have no speeding cars in narrow streets. Then, just before I moved away, they changed that and gave priority to roads that went directly to the closest arterial road which encouraged drivers to take shortcuts through my street to avoid a couple of traffic lights on the main road. Not the brightest idea, if you ask me.
You have the yield sign visible for a second at 7:57. We just don't have the word Yield inside it. When there is no yield sign of any kind, then you have to yield to everyone coming from the right.
3:50 Drivers are stopped entering pedestrian areas by ... the traffic signs every driver should understand ! But Americans expect to see english text written on signs, else they are "lost in space" 😁
That Swedish sign is totally fake! I live in Sweden and even i can't pronounce it!
You actually tried to pronounce it? Lol
I think it's a joke about the song that's playing (Pearl Jam - Yellow Ledbetter) and how unintelligible the singing is... it probably works better if you can hear the song playing in the video
May be not in Sweden, but in Finland the can have really long and odd looking words. And in some countries where they want to protect a cultural heritage they have strange road signs. Like in Ireland, with the bilingual signs with Gealic - they have some crazy words as well. And some that nobody can read or pronounce.
I live in Munich, that first video had me crying😂😂😂😂 the flower pot in the middle of the road and the tunnel, I guess that was the entrance to the Ubahn (metro, underground) hahaha!! thank God he didn’t go there 😅
Yes, I'm Swedish too, and that sign doesn't make any sense at all in Swedish. Just some random letters put together and a few of them are Å, Ä and Ö to make it look Swedish… However, we don't use ”w” almost at all in Swedish, except for things like www…
8:50 that's the sign that you have the right of way for this single intersection. And cars from other directions have to yield. The yellow and white sign is the sign that you are on a street where you have the right of way on multiple intersections until a sign says otherwise
As someone from the Netherlands this was entertaining to watch 😂
7:55
n°1] *Reverted triangle ; White center with Red outer lining*
Warning ; you don't have priority, those coming from the right do : you *_HAVE_* to concede passage. [Note : triangle is "Warning" ; associated to danger.]
8:05
n°2] *Regular standing triangle ; White center with Red outerlining ; symbol of a big Black arrow pointing forward, crossed by a small black perpendicular black line on it's middle.*
Warning ; you have the priority on this cross section : people from the right _AND_ left *_HAVE_* to concede you passage.
9:20
n°3] *Diagonally tilted square ; Yellow center with White outer lining.*
Statuatory Statement ; road with "Priority" status over it's complete length : you have priority over the _WHOLE_ road, until further notice. [Note : square is "Statuatory" ; associated to administrative status to given area(s).)
12:37 (not a sign per se. But a specific passage)
n°4] *Singular narrow two-way bridge with limited height signs on a yellow metal fence*
As the name implies, it's a very narrow bridge with barely room for one vehicle and of a weight limited to car bellow the restricted frame limit. This very specific kind of passage is normally preceded from a sign akin to previously mentionned *_n°2_* ; a sign that state which side of the bridge has priority over the other to determine who gets to go through first should vehicles find themselves at both of it's end. (Of course, if a vehicle is already engaged in the middle because there was no one at the other end and then a vehicle appear on the extremities, the one already engage HAS to be left going through to liberate the passage.)
It's also important to note that this kind of passage can also benefit from the presence of fully functionnal red lights to help managing traffic. But those ones are generally found at locations of either more intense traffic or due to strategically located one because of their geography (like a above water bridge or a narrow mountain tunnel leading to a military facility or a governmental affiliated one, for example.)
14:19
n°5] *Regular standing rectangle ; White center with black outer ligning.*
Statuatory Statement ; announce the normally litterate hairless apes that this lands of the IKEA gods does not suffer neither men, women or punctuation. Turn back thee who enters here or face the cooked rice with meatball & berry jam punishment of penultimate constipation.
******
Finally, as a friendly reminder to any U.S.A. person reading this : the United Kingdom (U.K.) and Japan are, as far as i am aware of, two of the very countries in the world where traffic occurs on the left and the vehicle driver seat is on the right. As such, any "U.K." experience _CANNOT_ - i insist *CAN-NOT* - be considered representative of Europe's driving experience (regardless of traffic signs and regulation.) It's essentially like driving in mirror mode ; regardless of you being an American or a Spaniard, you WILL get confused since it's clashing with your own driving experience.
8:28 In most of Europe we have the same traffic rules and signs. When there are no signs all traffic coming from the right has the right of way. When there are shark teeth on the road pointing towards you, you have to give the right of way to all traffic from the left and right and if you see the sign she shows in the video (both the cross with arrow and the yellow one) you have the right of way before people coming from left and right.
Actually it's easy to drive into pedestrian areas because delivery cars and craftsmen have to do it, too, but you also have huge signs at any entry point to keep you out if you're an american tourist 🤣
In Germany you only have to stop at a stop sign. The triangular one she showed means more like "You have the right of way, but go slow and be aware, there's a crossing".
"Rechts vor links" is only when there are no signs at all. In this case you have to go as slowly as necessary to be able to see an upcoming car from the right, to stop completely and to let it pass. The speed is depending on how far you can see around the corner. I think in driving school you learn to stop completely, but that's more like an overacting thing to show you thought of it - nobody really does that in real life.
American: "One car lane is terrifying me."
European: "If it fits slowly it fits fast too!"
My theory is, that american cars have become so big that people just aren't able any more to assess the measures of their cars. In european parking lots you see cars going around other cars by just centimeters every day, even older models without cameras and all that beep beep beep. And they succeed.
In the UK, during a driving test, if the examinor says "take the second road on the right", you cannot count the roads which are one-way in the wrong direction. You're supposed to figure it out by skipping the roads you cannot take and only take the second road that you can take.
10:48 you can get trucks through that with abnormal loads in both directions at the same time. That road is massive.
It's not narrow unless there are bushes in the middle, the bushes are rubbing both sides of the car and passing places are half mile away!
7:55 yield sign
8:02 its a sign that says that your road has the right of way but 🎉only for this crossroad
No sign is Right before left
If you are both on the same road but one goes straight and the other crosses the other side to make a turn than the one the goes straight has the right of way
If 2 people are making a turn that intersect then the person who has the smallest turn can go first smallest, if they are the same size they in most cases dont intercept
If there is a stop sign you must be standing still for 2 seconds to look
If there are multiple people approaching an all stop than the first one arriving has the right of way.
In the Netherlands there is also a sign that lets you know you are entering a dangerous crossroad(low visibilty for example) its a triangle(point up) red edge and white middle with a black X in the middle
9:55 you have that situation in high density like near entrances to homes on 30kmh(20mph) roads, you also have a lot of right before left on agricultural/remote roads due to there being less traffic
In the center of a city you most likely have a road that has full clearance or traffic lights. With full clearance you have the right of way not matter what its indicared by white square with smaller yellow square in the middle at 45° angle
Hi from the Netherlands, Netherlands/EU has a common sign mandate to a certain extend
The "tunnel" on the Marienplatz would actually have been one of the best choices to get back a road for cars again 😅
It doesn't help that the standard of driving in the US is lower than that of Europe.
When it comes to driving, Europe has it all, from the absolutely "German" German drivers (who obey every rule but drive like absolute mad lads and lasses on the Autobahn) to the sheer and utter chaos that unfolds whenever you venture south of the Alps or east of the Elbe river.
Well, this seems a bit biased to me. I have driven sicilian roads, german roads, polish roads, czech roads and irish roads and let me say, that bith sides of Elbe are rules obeying cultures compared to madness, that happens on both islands of Sicily and Ireland. :D
I dunno buddy, I wouldnt put germans in the "good drivers" basket
Both of you need a lesson in hyperbole.
@@OnkelWilli I have never in my life seen a good german driver and I live in Mallorca
As someone from the Munich area who knows the place pretty well where the Americans drove through: it's not to hard to get there as you can drive legally till a 100m before this point to access a parking garage an the pedestrian area isn't that strictly separated from the streets, it's only a small curbs (to gain access for rescue, delivery and maintenance vehicles) and different underground. As you can see that the GPS is guiding them through there I assume they only follow the instructions and ignoring the shit tons off signs signaling the pedestrian area and big flower pods narrowing the street at the beginning of the pedestrian zone.
Fun fact: the route they were driving was legally drivable for traffic 2p years ago and was changed later to become a part of the pedestrian zone.
13:07 those are height limits. They make sure there aren’t any trucks or other… big cars (?) getting on the bridge, probably because it ALSO has a weight limit.
You often see those in parking lot entrances as well to keep camper vans out (especially in France as they have a lot of Roma people loving there)
The bridge is two way but there is no traffic lights present (that can be seen.
As already said the yellow construction with a sign in the middle is a height restriction sign placed there as a-bit further on there is a low clearance and it is better to hit the sign then what’s ahead (cheaper to repair as well).
In the UK, if it's a triangle shape, it's a warning.
If it's circular its a instruction.
Most junctions are warnings of "give way," so proceed with caution, but you dont need to necessarily stop.
But a no entry, stop sign, or speed limit is in a circle, so therefore, it is an instruction.
Believe it or not, there's a method in the madness.
Not just the UK, all countries in Europe uses triangle shape warning signs, except Ireland they use diamond shapes for warning sign for some reason.
Give way is a requirement (order) , but the triangle is upside down. That's one of the oddities in UK signage.
Stop signs are actually octagonal. They are the only octagonal sign so they can be identified even if covered by snow.
@@PedroConejo1939 Yes give way is only an order to slow down, but stopping isn't required unless it's necessary, unlike stop signs where stoping is required.
@@tripnick555 Just like how give way signs are the only upside down triangle signs.
Even Europeans can sometimes be confused about the traffic culture in other Europeans.
Far too many years ago, I spent some time in Scotland, where, as the saying goes, "Left is right and right is wrong. I.E. they drive on the left side of the road, as we, in Sweden did till 1967.
In Scotland, and certainly on the Isle of Skye, many roads are one lane only, with pockets for meeting cars every mile or so, which calls for some fine-tuning of your speed, which is quite fun, esecially so, since most drivers do not switch their headlights on in daytime (and quite a few not even at dawn or dusk. I had become quite proficient at judging distances and speed, so cars coming towards me was no problem, thus i was driving rather fast.
A car coming up behind seemed to be in a hurry, so it was "the pedals to the metal" to no avail. I had to give up and stopped, as did the other car.The driver, an elderly, really elderly, woman, wound down her side window and said: "Sir,You got your lights on, before returning the way we came.
In most of Europe you must have your headlights on in daytime, a matter of road safety. I Scotland (and probably in the UK, it means "I´m in a hurry",
Hans Strömberg, Sweden
...in most northern European countries you have daylicht headlights..
In France, Belgium, Germany (I don't kmow the other countries), headlights must be turned on only at night or when the weather is dark. Nothing forbids you to turn them on during sunny daytime, but it seems do weird that nobody does it.
I lived in the UK for a while and got a real jump scare several times when a car with no lights on and "no one in the driver's seat" (according to my subconscious mind), suddenly started moving. 😂
The second guy looks like he didn't adjust the steering wheel distance at all, it almost hitting his knees lol
13:00 height restriction, perhaps coming up to an old stone rail bridge above the road. it oddly looks like their enroute/ coming from a graveyard
8:20 this road sign means that you are on a priority road, cars coming from side streets, left or right, have to stop and let you go first.
So, having served in the British Army, where ever I served I had to take a theory test (every Year) to maintain my military licence, so I had to learn the local language and their traffic signs and systems. While living in Germany, my wife thought that Ausfarht (German for exit) was the biggest town Longest word I had to learn "ausgenommen zugmaschinen" no overtaking excluding tractors. So the common sense thing to do, if you are going to drive in a foreign country would be at least look up the driving standards and highways codes.
1st clip is Marienplatz in Munich. "The tunnel" is the s bahn underground train pedestrians entrance, that would have made the news thats for sure!
As a Swede i can 100% confirm that sign is NOT swedish.
8:19 yield points down. Pointing up means, it is a warning/attention sign.
This sign means ur approaching a crossing where you have priority over the crossing road. The crossing road will have the yield sign in this situation.
This attention sign is analogous to the yellow white rhombus, but the rhombus is ‘continuous’ priority on the road, while this sign is used for incidental priority situations for this road.
In Australia everyone knows how to use as well as respect a GIVE WAY (YEILD) sign.
Stop signs are more rare in Australia and give way is very common.
When there are two streets or roads crossing, even if they are of similar size, one will always have right of way over the other and never ever a four way stop or lights for a small road or street unless one is a major road and lights are deemed necessary.
Stop signs are only used on some T intersections where the terminating road stops for the cross road or a stop sign is used where traffic, obstacles and obstructions dictate a stop sign over a give way.
9:55 She should have driven slowly so that she could observe traffic without making her husband bob. 50 km/h is the limit, it isn't the compulsory minimum you must drive at in residential areas.
the main problem is her breaking like crazy, she could just break more gently. i had the same problem in my first few years on the road
That road in the UK isn't even that small. By our standards 😂
The fast, twisty and narrow 60mph roads near me are narrower than that... and often have deer, badgers, foxes and even sometimes dogs lurking in them, or magically stepping into them as you approach!
I am from Germany living in the UK, I could take you for a ride showing you the UK, taking the Eurotunnel into France going to Germany and explaining you all of these oddities! :D
Fun story, a friend who learned to drive in rural US - Mississippi I think - tried driving in SF when she was transferred there for work. She managed for a couple of days then one day was driving over a bridge somewhere - don't know the area but is there a huge and long bridge over water somewhere in SF - where there were multiple lanes and drivers swerving from one to the other without indicating or anything. She stopped the car on the side of the road with hazard lights flashing, waited for the police to come and then got out, and asked them to drive the car off the bridge, she was simply too terrified and at that stage was as likely to cause an accident as be the victim of one. At the far end she parked the car, left it and sold it to a housemate the same evening then handed in her licence [or license] the following day.
She's never driven since despite living in first England and now Ireland for nearly 30 years. No public transport where she lives either, she uses a taxi or car pools with a neighbour for the weekly shopping trip.
That'd be the Golden Gate Bridge 🌉 presumably
14:42 Just so there's no misinformation being spread, that sign is just gibberish, it's not even remotely Swedish.
"I promise, not all Americans are like this..." it is hard to believe sometimes. :,D
In Germany (and also here in Switzerland), if there is no sign giving right of way, the vehicle coming from the right has the right of way. There are many such roads, especially in residential areas. There are hardly ever signs regulating right of way. Another possibility is that there is a designated priority road. This is marked with a yellow diamond sign with a white border. In this case, the side roads usually have a sign to give way where they meet the main road (Yield in the USA). There are also stop signs. The difference is that (this is the rule, but in reality mostly people don't actually do this) you really have to stop at a stop sign, regardless of whether other vehicles are coming or not. With yield signs, you only have to watch out for other vehicles that have right of way, but you don't necessarily have to stop. This is easier in the USA. In particular, I find the “all-way stop” regulation there very practical and better than the confusion in this country. In my own experience, people drive much more defensively in the UK than on the continent, especially in Germany and some southern European countries. There really are a lot of narrow roads there and then there are cars parked everywhere on the road. But the people there are very relaxed about it, you give signs, say thank you when you are let through and there is always a smile and a wave. I've always enjoyed driving there.
That Swedish one is faked. The sign has SHUTTERSTOCK all over it, plus it’s a cemetery.
Thank you, Captain Obvious!
I mean it’s a meme on Eddie Vedder’s singing, so… but it seems our host maybe didn’t know it was fake
8:07 That traffic sign is a warning sign (triangle with pointy side up; yield is pointy side down). It means "you have the right of way but watch out for cross traffic". I see those mostly in rural areas where a farm track might unexpectedly cross a road.
@8:27 it's a "don't yield at the next intersection" sign. you'd have a cross for yield; or no sign at all. yielding for people coming from the right is the default. you have to learn to see the marks on the ground for a stop or yield sign on the road coming on the right you're about to cross; it means you don't have to stop (and you don't see this sign much; more the square priority sign that means "right of way for me from now on")
Rechts vor Links doesn't mean you have to stop every single time. Just slowdown enough to check for traffic.