Driving Like A Kiwi

We’ve been thinking about it for awhile, and for the sake of this post, let's say we're sure the one question burning in everyone’s mind is: how do we find driving in New Zealand? And if you weren’t wondering before, aren’t you now? And after all that prompting you’re still not wondering even yet, why don’t you do it just to humor us? C’mon...

Since you ask, we’ve found the driving in New Zealand to be pretty easy on the whole, despite the fact that, in the British fashion, they drive on the left, and the steering wheel is on the right side of the car here. Given how long we’re visiting NZ, buying a car and driving through the country is a necessity, given how rural much of the country is and how little public transport there is outside of the few big cities. Plus, the freedom afforded by having your own set of wheels is just as significant in NZ as it is in the States. Bus tours just can’t compare (on a side note, and this may only amuse us, but every time we see an Kiwi Experience bus, who are infamous for being rowdy piss-tours of 20-year olds through NZ, we feel compelled to shout out “Whoo! Kiwi Experience, whoo!”)

Getting used to driving on the right side of the car and on the left side of the road takes a bit of getting used to, but isn’t that bad really, it just takes some concentration. For my part, I refrained from texting people while driving for our first few weeks in the country. Most tourist accidents result from the tourist entering the wrong lane on an empty rural stretch of road, driving along for a wee while, and then coming around a blind turn to find a surprised Kiwi coming head-on in their lane. With two of us around to warn each other, we’ve been able to avoid such a calamity. In fact, we might have been a bit too vigilant as passengers in the beginning. To wit, when we first got here we found that being a passenger on the left side was quite odd, as we constantly felt like the wheels on that side of the car were going to go off the road. Our first month featured many “Right, right!” yells before we got over that one, thankfully, since we were fast getting on each other’s nerves.

Me driving on the right side of the car. Is this blowing your mind?

To date Ron Burgundy, our hot 1992 Subaru (say sue-BAR-ooo to avoid confusing the locals here) Legacy, has performed really well for us (knock on wood), squiring us through about 20K km so far with very few problems. Ron doesn’t have a manual transmission, which is good since that might’ve been a bit hairy in our first few months here, especially for Becky. Somewhat confusingly, in NZ the turn signal lever is on the opposite side of the wheel as we know it, resulting in an unintentionally clean windshield for a lot of our turns. Because of this, I expected that the manual gear shifts might be backwards as well. However, they are the same as in the States, with 1^st gear in the upper left, which seems a bit awkward for some reason. Luckily the clutch pedal is in the same place.

Crossing the street also really screws you up at first here. I’ve had “look left-right-left” when crossing the street hammered into my brain for my entire life, and reversing that concept freaked us out the first few days we spent in Auckland. Seriously, we were doing triple and quadruple-takes crossing the streets there, running across mostly empty streets because we were convinced cars were going to just materialize behind us, making exotic turns with which we were unfamiliar.

As for the roads, we’re currently on the Canterbury Plain on the South Island, where the roads have the luxury of being relatively straight and flat. And paved (or tar-sealed in the local lingo), which is nice as well, as when you get out in the sticks a surprising amount of the roads are of the rugged, gravel variety. One thing that is nice is that there’s very little motorway here, probably less than 50 miles of true Interstate-like highway in the whole country. It really isn’t needed beyond Auckland and other big cities, and most of the main highway is two-lane, with the occasional passing lane thrown in. As an example of how un-American NZ highways are, the main highway in the South Island which runs along the sea between Kaikoura and Christchurch has fords to allow rain to run off the mountains above. Not the kind of Fords you’re used to seeing on the road in America. Rimshot! Thank you, I’ll be here all year.

Crossing a river, NZ-style!

Once you get out of the large metropolitan areas, especially on the North Island, the roads turn ungodly twisty on the hills, and in a refreshing change, are largely un-guardrailed. We’ve determined that this is actually probably how NZ most effectively enforces its Warrant of Fitness (WoF) auto regulation. If your brakes aren’t good enough to pass the WoF, they sure as hell aren’t good enough to stop you coming down a mountain pass at 50 kph through the switchback-laden roads. What might be even more amazing is how fast Kiwis love to drive through them. We’ve been passed so many times on ridiculously curvy and steep roads that we can only conclude the country is full of F1-racer wannabes, or that this country has an amazing resistance to motion sickness.

It may seem counterintuitive, but trust us, the key is to take the curves as fast as possible.

In a possibly-apocryphal tale from Matt Pedersen’s father, we’ve heard that the crews that built the roads in NZ were paid by the corner. If you drove the roads here for even a week, you’d be inclined to agree that that was plausible, especially after seeing numerous examples of relatively flat road sections having extra turns where they don’t seem necessary. At this point, we find that curvy road signs are largely superfluous. Some of them look more like a question mark than any road you’d be familiar with. Quick test: are you driving on a straight road? If yes, then you probably aren’t in NZ. Therefore, we humbly propose that NZ change its flag to a Union Jack with a curvy road sign. We kid because we love, but seriously, that wouldn’t be a bad idea. Or if you really wanted to go all the way, have a sheep with a kiwi on its back, holding a rugby ball and jumping over the curvy road sign – even better.

New Zealand does have one truly confounding local traffic oddity: the Gentleman’s turning rule, introduced about 20 years ago to confuse everyone not from here. Basically, if you’re making a left-hand turn and an oncoming car is turning right across traffic, you’re obligated to stop and allow him to go ahead of you, ostensibly for the purposes of keeping traffic moving more smoothly. If you don’t allow him to go, he’ll likely crash into you because he was expecting you to yield to him. For our first few months here, I’d guess about 95% of the Kiwis we met felt obliged to explain the rule to us, even after we swore we understood it. We’ve seen ample drawings, illustrations, walkthroughs, and more than one example utilizing salt shakers as they’ve endeavored to clarify it for us. The GTR is also more than a little unpopular; if we’ve met anyone who’s been in favor of the rule, I certainly don’t remember it. The opinion of Kiwis we’ve met seems to be that it’s a silly rule and NZ is not ahead of the rest of the world on this one.

As a result of the GTR, I’m completely paranoid, looking all over the place for someone who might be turning anytime I’m making a turn. In one of my first weeks here I did remember to wait for the other driver to turn, and in response he just looked at me with a completely puzzled look as to why I wasn’t turning. At that point I thought, “Ha, newbie!”, which I’ll probably have to file under: disturbing signs you’ve gone native…