It was suggested to put this as a new thread, so I am.
let me know if anyone has done this before:
We are thinking of extending our tour from one week in London, to two weeks, and visiting more of either the UK or France. Has anyone done this before: renting a car on the continent and taken it to the UK.
MY thought is: yes it is on the other side of the road, but at least, the drivers part is on something we are more familiar with...one less thing to worry about.
Thanks!
I disagree with the assumption that you would find it easier to drive a LHD car in the UK. The entire road network is designed to driven on by cars whose steering wheel is on the right.
Obeying road markings, signage and maintaining road discipline will all be easier to achieve driving a UK registered car. You will be at greater risk driving a foreign car when carrying out certain manoeuvres, especially overtaking.
If you are a confident, competent driver then you should have no problems driving a RHD car.
On my first visit to the UK, I rented a British RHD car. It did take some getting used to, shifting with left hand and looking left for the rear-view mirror, and my right hand hanging around wondering why it had nothing to do, but I learned it. On my second visit, I had a long-term lease of a French LHD car and picked it up at Heathrow. It was perfectly easy driving everywhere in the UK, except when I came to a ticket booth (such as to enter a parking garage) and did not have any passenger to operate things on that side of the car. On narrow roads, I actually preferred the LHD car, since I wasn't sitting as close to the whoosh of oncoming traffic.
Rick has always recommended renting two separate cars for the type of trip you're contemplating. There are expenses involved in taking a car onto a ferry or Eurotunnel train (but tickets for passengers on the regular Eurostar are not free, either.) And dropping a French rental car on the other side of the Channel would cost even more.
A few thoughts...
My personal car - which I have had for 10 years and am very familiar with - and I (with my wife) go from England to Europe several times a year. It is always fun because my car speaks mph and all the signs in Europe are in kph. No worries, mate, I always have a GPS (Satnav) on the dashboard and I convert it to speak French settings when I am in the tunnel. So I always know that I am at the right speed for the speed cameras.
In France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands Switzerland and Italy there frequent computerised speed cameras on many major roads.
In the UK we have more cameras than all those above added together.
You need to know the national speed limits which are not normally posted and be able to drive at or below those speeds. You could convert those speeds to kph or maybe the hire car will have a convertible digital dashboard.
You will need deep pockets. You have to declare to the hire company that you will be going to the UK and they will charge you big money for the privilege. You have to tell them because you have to get them to give you the original registration documents and the original insurance documents which are required for the border crossing and for any incident that might occur. You are unlikely to have any valid insurance on the ferry or Eurotunnel because the hire company won't cover the crossing, so you need to arrange for that cover.
In the summer the Eurotunnel fares and the ferry fares go right up. Check what you can get for the dates you need before you commit to the hire car.
And then there's the fun of driving where you can't see the road ahead of you and can't pass unless you pull out a whole car's width which is difficult.
The only place it isn't difficult is on motorways although on and off ramps can be interesting.
I wouldn't recommend it.
I have little to no trouble going the other way because I always have a co-pilot in the other seat who I rely on completely and trust completely to be my eyes - and I have 10 years of practice. The first few years weren't so simple.
Oh, and it is my personal car and my insurance is valid anywhere in the EU and EEA.
It depends on how confident a driver you are. In 2013 I spent 3 weeks in a LHD car and put a little over 2600 miles on it without any great difficulty. From what I have read, LHD or RHD, the first 15-30 minutes are the hardest just getting used to the reverse flow of traffic. I know of one person who had a collision with a RHD car pulling out of the rental car parking lot. I personally was glad that I started out mostly on motorways, the speed may be higher but the traffic flow is relatively stable giving you a better chance to get used to the traffic pattern. One advantage to the LHD car is that you won't frequently be looking in the wrong place for the rear view mirror.
The worst part is trying to pass a truck on a 2 lane road. At that point you need a reliable navigator in the right seat to tell you when the road is clear.
Overall I think the economics of what you are looking at will drive a decision to rent two cars. If the rental company won't let you take it on a ferry, you can use the Chunnel but then comes the question of where do you drop it off and what will the rental company charge to repatriate the car.
Every year thousands of people from the continent and the UK take vacation trips on "the other side of the channel" and get along quite well. The question is do you want to do it with a rental car.
There used to be a switching system between hire cars either side of the Channel Tunnel operated by Hertz but that was discontinued quite a while ago. I guess there was little call for it.
Cross boarder is allowed to the UK from France. Chunnel is ok as well....
-per the several rental agencies i checked with
thank you all for your replies!
Honestly, this sounds like a terrible idea to me. First, as I hope you know, you definitely do not want or need a car anywhere near London. Well beyond London, yes, a car can be handy in some places (but is totally unnecessary in many other places - do your homework and decide where you expect to go before thinking about car details). If I was planning some time in an area of the UK not well served by public transit, plus some time in France also not well served by public transit, then I would simply get one car for the UK, take the train to France, and get a different car for there. I suspect that would be a lot cheaper than trying to make one car work for both, and would save a lot of hassle.
FWIW, I just got back from a trip to the UK. I did a lot of driving on this trip (drove from Salisbury to Inverness). As others have said, the first few minutes of "making the switch" are the most difficult, but I often found myself on the wrong side of the road after making a left or right turn; my wife, in the seat next to me, had the job of screaming at me "drive on the LEFT" to quickly correct me. I'm glad she was there and up to the task. As an aside, when we rented our car in Salisbury, there was another American couple who were picking up their car just ahead of us. They exited the car park and after have driven less than 100 feet, they crashed their car badly (no injuries, but both cars looked almost totaled) - this happened just a few seconds after they confidently drove off with a smile and a wave, right outside the rental agency - as we were being handed our keys, we heard the loud crash, looked, and saw the aftermath (the person about to hand me the keys to a brand new Ford rolled her eyes and gave me a hard look - I said "don't worry, I won't do that!"). Fortunately, I ended up driving almost 1000 miles, and never had an accident (although my tires did bump the curb at high speed too often - see below).
A couple more notes: on the motorways, the driving "on the wrong side" is easy enough. The roundabouts do take a little getting used to (some are easier than others). But I found the narrow-ness of the roads surprising and very challenging (most of the roads, not just out in the hinterlands). I also found judging the distance between the far side of the car and the edge of the road extremely challenging - I occasionally "bounced" off the curb, while driving along at high speed (because I couldn't easily judge how far the left side of the car was from the edge of the pavement, and the oncoming traffic seemed awfully close). It was very disconcerting. Then there were the single-lane roads with occasional "passing places"...those I actually found kind of fun.
Oh, and about those speed cameras: the warning signs about speed cameras are everywhere - I dont think we drove more than a few minutes anywhere in England where there wasn't a sign about speed cameras - it was incredible (not so many of them in Scotland). I don't know how many actual cameras there were (we saw a few) but the signs seemed to be pretty much on every mile of every road. No speeding tickets that I've seen (yet - it's just been a week or so...we'll see; I did try hard to obey all speed limits, but none of the cars around me seemed to be).
It sounds to me like this advice is going in one ear and out the other. Maybe I am mistaken.
Anyway, it is your vacation and your choice.
If (when) you have problems don't say you weren't warned....
