When you come to America on holiday for a couple of weeks, as we have done previously, you don’t really take a lot of notice of how daily life plays out. You are solely focused upon the plans you have to enjoy yourself and take in the key sights wherever you are visiting.
On this trip, however, we are travelling right through the USA from East to West, meeting loads of people en route and definitely absorbing our differences before embarking on another drive up the East Coast. There are no right or wrong ways to live life but considering we fundamentally share the same language I hadn’t expected to learn so much on this trip about how different our lives are, but they are! There are so many differences that I know already that I could probably write a small book!
Let me start with the one thing that I currently experience every day and to me is probably top of my list of differences:
DRIVING:
We have already spent a week in Chicago, then driven Route 66 sticking as much as possible to the original road and definitely avoiding freeways and interstates. We have detoured to Monument Valley, The Grand Canyon and Las Vegas and we have celebrated reaching the end at Santa Monica Pier.
In total I drove 3409 miles before departing LAX for Fort Lauderdale where, after a week chilling out, we picked up our second car to drive the Eastern Seaboard from Lauderdale to Richmond, Virginia. Here we pick up Amtrak to finish our trip in Washington, Philadelphia and New York before flying home with about five days left from within the ninety day time allowance permitted with our ESTA.
There are significant differences between driving in England and driving in the States beyond the obvious that we drive on the left with the steering wheel on the right and predominantly a manual gearbox.
We cannot learn to drive until 17 and we have to pass a two stage test – Theory and Practical. Once we have our licence registered at our home address we have to follow the Highway Code, this is basically the law of the road.
One of the major key differences is we get fined for disobeying the law, speeding being the first of these.
Additionally once a car is three years old it must be tested each year to check it meets road safety and environmental standards. This Ministry of Transport test is commonly known as an ‘MOT’ and without it you cannot drive your vehicle on any UK road.
You also get fined for failing to tax the car. Everyone has to pay an annual fee to the Driving and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) to have their car on the road.
You also get fined for failing to have insurance.
All of these rules alongside the obvious, driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, are rigidly enforced. How?
Apart from the section of the police force that is dedicated to monitoring traffic particularly on motorways (the equivalent to the US freeways and interstates) we have cameras. Cameras are everywhere in the UK!
In towns and cities there are big yellow boxes on the side of the road monitoring your speed but on motorways they can be on tall poles to the left of the traffic lanes, on bridges over the carriageway or in a traffic police car. Sometimes, particularly during roadworks on motorways, they have boxes similar to the big yellow ones that measure your speed between two points in order to calculate your average speed. This average speed is then measured against the speed currently displayed for drivers to follow.
If you get caught on camera the police just send you a letter through the post with the photographic evidence and you get an immediate fine which rises if you don’t pay within a certain time. You cannot avoid the fine because the number plate of the car in the photo is registered at the DVLA in your name, at your address and you are in the picture!
If you have moved address and failed to notify the DVLA and get caught you have to pay £1000 fine!
It is illegal to drive without a front number plate in the UK. If caught you will face 3 points on your licence and up to £1000 fine.
In addition to the fine for speeding you also get a minimum of 3 points on your license which stay on your licence for 3 years. Once you accumulate 12 points, at any point in your lifetime, you lose your licence for a minimum of 12 months.
If you fail to pay your fine you get prosecuted and ultimately can land up in prison.
I’ve known people get caught on the same camera going to work and then coming home in the same day!
If you are caught going 50% over the speed limit e.g. 45+ in a 30 mile zone you can get an automatic ban depending upon the circumstances.
The end result is the majority of people conform!
In the USA it feels like the huge majority of people just totally ignore speed limits.
In fact when I have driven at the speed limit I’ve often been tailgated.
The rationale behind this is that people know the likelihood of being caught is low!
Speed isn’t the only difference.
In the UK we have different levels of driving licence. Once you pass your test you have a full driving licence (category B) which entitles you to drive conventional, rigid-axle vans or pick-ups that weigh up to 3500 kgs and have up to eight passenger seats. Additionally you can tow a trailer up to 3500 kgs.
In comparison a newly qualified driver in the USA can drive a vehicle up to 26,000 lbs, that’s 11,793 kgs, nearly three times the size before needing a CDL!!! You can also tow a trailer weighing up to 10,000 lbs which is about 4500 kg.
If you want to drive the large coach style RV’s in the USA that is fine as long as it doesn’t exceed 40 feet.
In the UK you would need to sit a test to get a higher level of certification, called a C1 licence. It takes three separate tests and the case study part alone is a 75 minute test!
I find it so hard to believe that I’m currently out on the road surrounded by drivers who constantly speed and feasibly that a newly qualified driver at just 18 years old could be driving the massive coach style RV next to me!
Finally there are the lorries or trucks as they are called in the USA. A lorry in the UK is limited to 60 mph on a motorway. In the USA it varies from state to state but like cars the truck drivers seem to take little or no notice.
In the UK lorry drivers are limited as to how many hours they can drive for.
The key rules include: 9 hour daily limit on driving. This can be increased to 10 hours, but only twice a week. 56 hours is the maximum weekly driving limit.
In the USA this rises to between 11 and 14 hours of driving depending on the amount of hours off in between and 60 hours over a 7 day period.
When we were on our detour to Vegas and actually on a freeway, at one point I was going just over the speed limit of 75 mph doing 77 mph and was overtaken by an enormous truck!
My final comparison in this post is the lack of kindness. I’m used to people showing common courtesy to other road users. For example if someone is pulling onto a motorway in England the driver on the inside lane will either pull across to the middle lane to let the incoming driver on or if this is not possible they will slow down and maybe even flash their lights to indicate you can pull onto the carriageway.
The same occurs when the traffic is heavy and someone is trying to change lanes or in towns when someone is pulling out of a side road onto the main road or overtaking a stationary vehicle.
In America very, very few drivers show any courtesy, they will just not give way at all. I actually find this really disappointing.
I guess it’s not surprising, therefore, that the USA experiences 16.1 deaths due to traffic accidents per 100,000 cars on the road per year compared to only 5.7 in the UK.
Look out for more differences to come…………………………..
A Midlife Adventure 