Editor’s Letter: Opposite Days
From the October 2023 issue of Car and Driver.
A confession: I’m bad at driving on the wrong side of the road. It’s my kryptonite. There, I said it. It’s out there now. I feel a little better.
As the head of a group of automotive experts who have impeccable driving skills, I don’t find it easy to make this admission. Like you, I take pride in my driving abilities and regularly tune them up at racetracks, on freeway on-ramps and canyon roads, and during my 50-mile commute. I’ve raced against the clock in nearly all our Lightning Lap events at Virginia International Raceway, set a personal best of 2:39.5 in a 2019 Corvette ZR1, and even had a job offer to be a development driver. Before my ego gets out of control, you should know that I have mowed more grass at VIR than the rest of the staff combined. But my street driving has been contact-free for nearly 20 years, and my safety record during 11 years of instrumented testing is sterling. All bets are off, however, when I’m driving on the left side of the road. As the Brits might say, I become absolute rubbish.
I discovered my impairment on a Land Rover press junket to England in 2009. While driving a right-hand-drive LR4, I pulled onto an empty country lane and started cruising in the right lane. My passenger calmly reminded me, “They drive on the left here.” Apparently unconvinced, I kept finding myself on the wrong (right) side all day.
Manuals are even harder. My left arm hates shifting. Muscle memory is key to driving a manual. The problem is that my left hand’s last memory is of wearing a Rawlings infielder’s mitt in high school. Pulling Lefty off the bench and asking for a one-two shift is met with the same enthusiasm as asking him to transcribe Finnegans Wake with a bad case of Saturday night palsy.
When simple stuff requires a lot of concentration, there’s less brain to pay attention to the harder things, like remembering which side has the steering wheel. Once in, I can’t adjust to having all that car to my left. Placing the left wheels requires a surgeon’s focus, and I’m on the sidewalk. In England, right turns are more like our lefts. Lefts are rights. My brain does backflips. Let’s all sing the alphabet song backward: “Z, Y . . .” No time for that; I need to change lanes. Man, that right mirror is close, and the rearview is over there. Goodbye, spatial awareness. I would pull over and breathe into a paper bag, but I can’t remember which side the shoulder is on. Calm down, stupid. There’s a roundabout ahead. Those run clockwise, right? Just do the opposite of what you think is right. I’m going in. Someone please let me out of the mirror.
A recent drive from London to Cornwall in a right-hand-drive Porsche 911 GTS Cab showed I’m not making much progress. I returned it as I received it, but I’d been humbled. I shared my ineptitude with U.K.-born European editor Mike Duff. His response? “Driving on the wrong side is our superpower.” Okay, I’ve confessed my kryptonite. Now I’d like to know, what’s yours?
Editor-in-Chief
Tony Quiroga is an 18-year-veteran Car and Driver editor, writer, and car reviewer and the 19th editor-in-chief for the magazine since its founding in 1955. He has subscribed to Car and Driver since age six. “Growing up, I read every issue of Car and Driver cover to cover, sometimes three or more times. It’s the place I wanted to work since I could read,” Quiroga says. He moved from Automobile Magazine to an associate editor position at Car and Driver in 2004. Over the years, he has held nearly every editorial position in print and digital, edited several special issues, and also helped produce C/D’s early YouTube efforts. He is also the longest-tenured test driver for Lightning Lap, having lapped Virginia International Raceway’s Grand Course more than 2000 times over 12 years.