Which side of the road? Left-driving countries and why
Whether traffic keeps to the left or to the right is one of the most useful clues in Far Fetched, because it splits the world into two very unequal groups. Only 61 of the 214 countries and territories in the game drive on the left, so spotting left-hand traffic removes more than two thirds of the possible answers in a second. This guide shows how to work out the driving side even when nothing is moving, lists every left-driving place in the game, and explains how the two sides came about.
Reading the driving side when nothing is moving
A car coming towards you on the right-hand side of the road settles the question at once. Often, though, the road is empty, or the only vehicles in sight are parked. The good news is that roads are built around their traffic, so almost everything along them gives the direction away.
Parked cars
In most countries drivers park facing the same way as the traffic in the lane beside them. Look along the street. If the cars by the left kerb point away from you (you can see their rear lights) and the cars by the right kerb point towards you, traffic keeps left. The opposite pattern means traffic keeps right. Check several cars, because one-way streets and angled parking bays break the pattern, and some countries let drivers park facing either way.
Which way the signs face
Road signs stand beside the lane they are meant for and face the drivers coming towards them. So whichever way you are looking, the sign faces you can read belong to traffic travelling in your direction, and the plain backs belong to traffic coming the other way. If the readable signs are on the left side of the road, traffic keeps left; if they are on the right, it keeps right. This works well on empty country roads where there is little else to go on.
Writing and arrows on the road
Words painted on the road, such as STOP, SLOW, BUS or SCHOOL, and the arrows at junctions are laid out to be read by drivers approaching in that lane. If the lettering in the left-hand lane reads the right way up as you look ahead, that lane carries traffic away from you, so traffic keeps left. Painted bus stop boxes follow the same rule, since they are written for the bus driver pulling in.
Give-way lines at side roads
Where a side road meets a bigger road, the stop or give-way line is usually painted across only the half of the side road used by traffic arriving at the junction. If you are in the side road facing the junction, that line will be across the left half in a left-driving country and across the right half in a right-driving one.
Roundabouts
Traffic goes round roundabouts clockwise in left-driving countries and anticlockwise in right-driving ones. You rarely see a whole roundabout at once, but the signs before one often show curved arrows, and the chevron signs on the central island point the way traffic flows: to the left as you approach in a left-driving country, to the right in a right-driving one.
Motorway exits and steering wheels
On motorways and dual carriageways, slip roads usually leave and join on the side the traffic drives on, and the fast lane is the one nearest the middle. A slip road peeling off to the left is a left-driving sign.
A parked car with a visible steering wheel is a final check: in left-driving countries the wheel is usually on the right, so the driver sits nearest the middle of the road. There are exceptions. The U.S. Virgin Islands drive on the left, but most cars there come from the mainland United States and have the wheel on the left. Myanmar drives on the right, yet many of its cars have the wheel on the right because they were bought second-hand from Japan. Trust the road itself over the cars on it.
Every left-driving country and territory in Far Fetched
Here is the full list of the 61 places in the game where traffic keeps left. All of the other 153 drive on the right.
- Europe (6): United Kingdom, Ireland, Isle of Man, Jersey, Malta and Cyprus.
- North America and the Caribbean (12): Bermuda, the Bahamas, Jamaica, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Dominica, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, Barbados, and Trinidad and Tobago.
- South America (2): Guyana and Suriname.
- South Asia (7): India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives.
- Southeast Asia (6): Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Indonesia and Timor-Leste.
- East Asia (3): Japan, Hong Kong and Macau.
- Africa (14): South Africa, Lesotho, Eswatini, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda on the mainland, plus the island nations of Mauritius and Seychelles.
- Oceania (11): Australia, Christmas Island, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, Kiribati and Nauru.
That is a little over a quarter of the game. Put the other way round, nearly three in every four places on the list of answers drive on the right, which is why a left-driving scene is the rarer and more informative find.
How the driving side narrows your guess
Left-driving places are not scattered at random. They cluster in a few parts of the world, which makes the clue even stronger when you combine it with the landscape or the writing on signs.
- Africa: every left-driving country on the mainland belongs to one connected block in the south and east, from Kenya and Uganda down to South Africa. North, West and Central Africa all drive on the right, as do Ethiopia, Rwanda and Madagascar. Left-hand traffic on a dusty savanna road points firmly to that south-eastern block.
- South America: only Guyana and Suriname drive on the left. Signs in English mean Guyana; signs in Dutch mean Suriname.
- Europe: just six places. Speed limits in kilometres per hour and signs in Irish and English point to Ireland; miles point to the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man or Jersey; Greek letters mean Cyprus; and words full of letters like ħ and ż mean Malta.
- South Asia: every South Asian country in the game keeps left except Afghanistan, so here the clue mostly confirms the region rather than picking a country.
- Southeast Asia: a real splitter. Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Indonesia and Timor-Leste keep left, while Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar and the Philippines keep right.
- East Asia: Japan, Hong Kong and Macau keep left; mainland China, Taiwan, South Korea and Mongolia keep right.
- The Caribbean: most of the English-speaking islands keep left, while Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Martinique and Curaçao keep right.
- Oceania: most places keep left, but the islands with close ties to the United States, such as Guam, American Samoa and Palau, keep right, and so does Vanuatu.
Neighbours on opposite sides
Borders where the driving side changes are some of the best places to use this clue, because two neighbours that look alike can be told apart instantly.
- Thailand keeps left, but its neighbours Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar keep right.
- Hong Kong and Macau keep left, while mainland China keeps right.
- Guyana and Suriname keep left, with right-driving Venezuela, Brazil and French Guiana around them.
- Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bhutan keep left, while China and Afghanistan, across their mountain borders, keep right.
- Myanmar keeps right, with left-driving India and Bangladesh on one side and Thailand on the other.
- In Africa, left-driving Namibia and Zambia border right-driving Angola; Uganda and Tanzania border right-driving Rwanda; and Kenya borders right-driving Ethiopia.
- Islands close together can differ too. Samoa keeps left but nearby American Samoa keeps right; the U.S. Virgin Islands keep left but Puerto Rico keeps right; Mauritius keeps left and its neighbour Réunion keeps right.
- Gibraltar, a British overseas territory at the southern tip of Spain, drives on the right like Spain, even though the United Kingdom drives on the left.
One border has no change at all: Ireland and Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, both keep left, so the driving side won't help there. Look at speed signs instead (kilometres per hour in Ireland, miles per hour in Northern Ireland) and at the colour of the road lines.
Why some countries drive on the left
Nobody planned the split. For centuries people on foot, on horseback and with carts simply followed local habits, and those habits differed from place to place. As traffic grew, governments wrote their local habit into law, and neighbours and trading partners often ended up matching one another.
Britain kept to the left, and many places that were once ruled by Britain or closely tied to it still do, from India and Australia to Kenya and Jamaica. Much of mainland Europe settled on the right, and so did the United States. Canada, despite its long ties to Britain, drives on the right like its big neighbour.
British history doesn't explain everything, though. Japan was never ruled by Britain, yet it has kept left for well over a century; older customs and its first railways, built with British help, are often mentioned as part of the story. Thailand also keeps left, like its neighbour Malaysia. Indonesia and Suriname have historical links with the Netherlands, and Mozambique and Macau with Portugal, yet all four drive on the left. Mozambique is a good example of fitting in with the neighbours: every country it borders keeps left too.
Countries that switched sides
Changing sides is a huge job: signs, junctions and bus stops all have to be moved or rebuilt, and every driver has to change their habits overnight. Even so, several countries have done it.
- Sweden switched from left to right on 3 September 1967. Swedes call it Dagen H, "H Day", where H stands for höger, meaning right. All of its neighbours already drove on the right.
- Iceland made the same change the following year, in 1968.
- Myanmar moved from the left to the right in 1970, and Nigeria and Ghana did the same in the 1970s, matching their neighbours.
- Okinawa, a chain of islands in the far south of Japan, drove on the right for several decades and moved back to the left in 1978 to match the rest of the country.
- Samoa went the other way in 2009, switching from right to left. One reason was to make it easier to bring in right-hand-drive cars from nearby Australia and New Zealand, where many Samoan families have relatives.
Putting the clue to work
Make the driving side the first thing you check in every round, before you even read a sign. A simple routine works well:
- Find a car, a sign face or some road lettering and decide: left or right?
- If it's left, run through the short list for the part of the world the scenery suggests.
- Use writing, road markings and landscape to choose within that list.
For example, a dry road through open grassland with left-hand traffic, yellow edge lines and signs in English is very likely in southern Africa. If you can't decide which country, a central guess pays off: in Far Fetched, guessing Botswana scores 2 points if the answer is South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe or Zambia, because they share a border, and 1 point for Lesotho or Eswatini, which are in the same sub-region.
Roadside posts can help you check your answer, since many countries mark the left and right sides of the road differently; our field guide to bollards and road posts shows the main types. If you're new to the game, the beginner's guide explains how scoring and the different modes work.
Try it: Start a Survival game on the Africa map and name the driving side before anything else in every round. Left-hand traffic narrows you to 14 places, and a careful neighbour guess keeps your lives safe even when you're unsure of the exact country.