Things they don’t tell you about driving in LA.



The first big thing of course is that they drive on the other side of the road and the driver’s seat is the left hand front seat. That’s pretty straight forward and obvious. 

One of the hardest things to get used to, is to resist the urge to drift to the right when you’re driving. I suppose this is because our ‘left-hand side of the road brain’ isn’t used to where you sit in relation to the lane and the road. It’s always good to have a passenger yell at you to “get over”. 

The freeways are probably the easiest as there you just stay in your lane - plus they always let you in when you need to merge.

Rental cars also need fuel but such a simple task, which we do many times a week in Australia has it’s own little tricks.

The petrol station we used had the usual bowser but with just a diesel hose and a petrol hose. But the petrol hose could deliver three different fuel types, depending on which button you pushed on the bowser.

I tried to pay with my travel card, but it didn’t seem to work, so tried my MasterCard. It wanted my Zip Code, so I knew that wasn’t an option.

So went inside to pay with my travel card and pre-paid $20. OK - all good. But then dispensing the fuel required the fitting of a rubber boot over the filler pipe and the pushing of the nozzle against the end of the pipe, or else it just dribbles out.

A GPS is the best way to get around, although driving to drop off the rental car this morning, it died twice and 'lost the GPS' signal. Thankfully my iPhone was able to save the day.

First time is the fiddliest - but should be OK from here on.

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