Speaking only for myself, obviously, but as a Brit who had been driving for about 8 years on my first ever visit to the U.S., I found no problems adapting whatsoever after the first few miles (I had already driven in Spain before, so admittedly it wasn't my first time on the "wrong" side of the road).
Maybe the narrowness of British roads in towns and the twistiness of country lanes is less of a problem for those who have grown up in those parts of the U.S. where there is something approximating them. Some of the side streets in the old part of Charleston, S.C. and the twisty little back roads up in the mountains of N.C. come to mind.
There's also the point that American road signs tend to be rather more logical and consistent. Many of the current British signs are completely unintuitive and illogical.
I agree.
And like you, I too had no problems with taking to US roads/driving, finding the roadways in Austin refreshingly wide, mostly clearly marked and signed, and straight -- although there are twisty roads there too. The twisty stuff I'm thinking more of are the ancient London roads such as the lanes around Hampstead, Highgate, those city places where a twisty road comes out to a very peculiarly configured traffic light junction, and if your instructor says "Go straight ahead", he may actually mean the road that looks to me like it's veering madly off to the right!
In many US cities, you don't get many of those as almost everything was built to nicely configured grid plans.
I found US driving easy, and passed my US test with full marks but one, the highest score my particular US driving instructor said he'd had amongst his students. Then I come back to the UK, and after twenty years of enjoying the mostly good design and ease of use of roadways in the US, I found myself tackling the heart of London. It was scary.
I did, by the way, pass my theory-and hazard with flying colors; personally I did find that to be the "easy" part of the test, although you can still stuff that up if you don't use the study material, which I did intensively. You
do have to apply yourself to studying or you will fail that, I would say to anyone reading this thread.
But as for the experience of actually driving here, I eventually got over the issues and my fear factors, but there was a period when I
never thought I would, and was almost prepared to simply never drive again on UK soil, I was so freaked out by London streets.
Even though I'm past that now, it was no picnic getting to that stage, not in the cramped, crowded and anciently irregluar streets I had to deal with. Even UKY-ers in more rural areas have said on this thread that they felt very challenged learning to drive on UK roads, intelligent people with years of good driving in the US, so this is why I take issue with someone posting that "it's a breeze" as if that will be universal truth. It may be the experience of some lucky people, and more power to them, but the existence of this very thread testifies that it's far more common that most of us have some fear, some issues, need support and encouragement, maybe get there in the end, but would admit it wasn't just 'no big thing'.
