Hi, Ardith Hinton! -> Alexander Koryagin
I read your message from 17.11.2020 16:12

 AH>> Various examples & historical anecdotes available on request. :-))
 AK>> Oh, you are very welcome!

 AH> Okay... here's one. As you probably know, Americans drive on the
 AH> right side of the road & people in a majority of other countries do
 AH> too. But things haven't always been that way. When it really
 AH> mattered which side of a horse a knight mounted on & what the
 AH> chances were of meeting up with an enemy who was approaching from
 AH> the opposite direction, it made sense to keep to the left. The
 AH> situation changed in the 18th century when teamsters began hauling
 AH> farm produce from one place to another. Most preferred to drive on
 AH> the right because, with a team of horses working in pairs, they'd
 AH> sit on the left where they could simultaneously use their dominant
 AH> hand to control the horses & see that their wheels didn't get
 AH> tangled up with other people's wheels.

I also want to note, that women also were road traffic participants, and during
those times they sat on their horses sidelong with their both legs hung on the
left side of horse. So, if the traffic on roads had been right-sided women
could have gone under the horse approaching from the opposite direction, in
case they fell from their own horses. It case of left-side movement they could
get safely into the road ditch, the worst scenario. ;-)

 AH> The aristocracy still wanted do things the way they were used to,
 AH> and others sometimes resented being forced to the right when
 AH> horsemen passed. But over time continental Europe, Russia, and the
 AH> US all accepted the idea of driving on the right. From my POV as a
 AH> student of language this is where the story gets a lot more
 AH> interesting. I understand that when stage coaches were used in the
 AH> US somebody would probably be "riding shotgun", and that in those
 AH> days people were routinely told "don't fire until you see the
 AH> whites of their eyes" because the firearms which were available at
 AH> the time couldn't be aimed with the same degree of precision as
 AH> modern weaponry. There had been highway robbers in England since
 AH> medieval times at least... e.g. Robin Hood. I think they'd have
 AH> found it advantageous to conceal themselves on a horseman's left.
 AH> Later on, in SomePlace Else, it made sense to position whoever was
 AH> guarding a coach on the driver's right... where assailants would be
 AH> more likely to hide.

So, returning to our horses, the women used to dismount from both horses and
carriages from the left -- and a universal rule, as we know, is a good and easy
rule. You should not rake your brains and think which variant is better. That's
why they still follow the rule in England. ;-)

 AH> AFAIC it doesn't matter which side of the road other folks prefer
 AH> driving on as long as there is general agreement WRT how things are
 AH> done. In Montreal there are two types of pedestrians... i.e. the
 AH> quick & the dead. In LOndon the same applies, but you must
 AH> look "right-left-right" before crossing the street despite what's
 AH> been drilled into you since you were knee-high to a grasshopper. I
 AH> survived both. Meanwhile, folks here in BC drove on the left until
 AH> it became problematic that our neighbours to the south didn't. Not
 AH> all provinces changed at the same time... but BC did it about a
 AH> century ago.

It's interesting to look at how the road with left-driving rules is passing
into the right-driving road, especially if the road have a good traffic. ;-)

Bye, Ardith Hinton!
Alexander Koryagin

english_tutor 2020

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