[Brian]

One thing that struck me (not literally, thank god) on my trip to NZ was how much different the right-of-way rules were from the US and how mad people got if you didn't follow them. I think I figured out the roundabouts but I think I was still doing other things incorrectly.

Is there a good explanation of them posted somewhere?

One odd thing happened in ChCh that I haven't figured out yet. I was in the left lane, waiting for a light to turn green so I could make a left turn. On the other side of the intersection the road I was in became a one-way street facing me. There was a car directly opposite me waiting to make a right turn into the same lane I was waiting for. I assumed that since I was closer to the lane that I would have right of way so when the light turned green I hit the gas. So did the other car, but I was already halfway into the lane so I sped up and kept going. Rather than wait for me, the guy slammed on the gas, then on the brakes, then passed me on the left screaming at me. I thought he was going to run me off the road and start choking me he was so angry.

Is there some rule that says a person turning right has priority over a person turning left into the same lane or was the guy just nuts?

[kiwidebs]

Hi

Yes, NZ has a really weird road rule that gives right turning traffic the right of way. But the guy sounds like a bit of a nutcase too!!!
Roundabouts are reasonably easy - give way to anything approaching from the right and anything already on the roundabout.

Hope this helps
Debs

[Moorf]

No, the guy wasn't nuts, it was his right of way! Yep, it's weird! But if you are turning left and he is oppo you turning right onto same road, you let him go (unless, if it was a 2-way road ahead of you and cars behind/beside you were going straight on, he would give way to those and you could turn left whilst he was waiting!). This is pretty much how we ended up being T-boned, except we were at a T-junction .... http://www.emigratenz.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3916&highlight=accident

Oh, and watch for those traffic light junctions where if you're turning left sometimes the pedestrian crossing is still green so, again, you have to wait before turning even though the traffic light says go! :roll

[foolsgold99]

It was expained to me as the "self preservation rule", if at any intersection if you were both to go, if his car was to impact on your drivers side, then they had right of way.

If someone hits you on your passenger side, then you had right of way.

I've not put this well at all, but think about it the next time your in the car, it does make sense

[Miffy]

Thats a really good way of explaining it fools gold :nice1 (this theroy also works for roundabouts)

the other thing you need to remember is there that you can not turn left on a red light, regardless if the way is clear. If there is a red light that means stop.
You can't do a quick cheeky left turn if nothing is coming you way the way you can in the states.

[Smiler]

Hmmmm.............reminds self to pick up copy or two, of NZ highway code.

Thanks foolsgold that's a good tip to help me remember right of way at junctions.:nice1

In a simliar vein, if at a xroads I'm turning right and said car oppo gives way to me, and pedestrians are crossing the road I'm turning into and they have a red pedx light, who the hell has right of way?

I thought I did, but am I going to have to give way to said illegally crossing peds. I just feel very vunerable and hesitant stuck out there on a junction :confused:

D

PS and don't get me started on bikes or skaters

[GeorgeM]

In a simliar vein, if at a xroads I'm turning right and said car oppo gives way to me, and pedestrians are crossing the road I'm turning into and they have a red pedx light, who the hell has right of way?
You have right of way, but you're not allowed to smash into them to shift them.

And as peds don't have to display a licence plate you can't identify them to report them.

And if you did you don't (yet) need a licence to go out walking so they wouldn't get a ban from doing it again anyway.

You just have to put up with it.

I suppose that if the law could be bothered they could do the peds for jaywalking, but why bother when it's much more lucrative to blip people for $50 for going a few kph over a ridiculously low speed limit on a perfectly safe stretch of road?

[jubjub]

Just to digress for a moment, as the subject of mad pedestrians has been raised, has anyone noticed that they just dont care over here?? I reckon they all have an inbuilt deathwish!

I dunno how many people I have had to dodge in car parks, we even very nearly ran a girl over the other day as she ran across the road, when we had a clear green light on a 60kph road (luckily we were going slow enough to stop). Hubby did shout at her for being stupid and got swore at for his trouble!

Oh, and we nearly got run over on a zebra crossing at the shopping mall, as someone decided to jump the queue of traffic that had stopped to let the pedestrians across!

[Smiler]

I agree Sal. Said incident happened to me on Willis Street last night.

But I have noticed that, in general, suicidal road crossers seem to be more common here.

I feel like an old lady driving at junctions here, all I need is a noddy dog and 2 cushions on the parcel shelf, a Rover 216, a car rug and a flat cap/sunhat.

Wait til the 306 GTi6 wheelies out of the container, I'll showem' :p Roll on the end of November.

D

[Brian]

It was expained to me as the "self preservation rule", if at any intersection if you were both to go, if his car was to impact on your drivers side, then they had right of way.

If someone hits you on your passenger side, then you had right of way.

I've not put this well at all, but think about it the next time your in the car, it does make sense

Thank you! I'll need to adjust my thinking a bit as over here it's more a matter of letting through whoever goes first or whoever has a more direct route.

The rule actually makes a little more sense in that you should have a better view of the driver side of the car and have more of an incentive to keep from getting hit that way :)

[Jonathon1977]

I am a bad enough driver here in the states and I have decided I can not live without a car. As crazy as this sounds the whole driving thing really is one of the biggest stress factors I have at the moment. I guess deciding to sell everything but two suitcases has liberated me so that I can worry about such things.

As if driving in another country is not enough I keep reading about these Hooners and don't like the sound of it. Even back in Los Angeles we really did not have that level of reckless driving.

[Jason2112]

Heh, those of us from the US have to learn to drive on the other side of the road in addition to all these strange rules. It's even tough to visualize some of the scenarios that have been posted, I have to picture it as if I'm looking into a mirror :D It should be interesting....

[veronica]

its not so bad, I feel that hooners are being given a vast presence that is more myth than reality. They do exist but tend to keep the more extreme behaviour for Friday and Saturday nights at a specific location at a time when most of us are in Bed, they do have races in the city centre here in chch but it tends to be after midnight on the weekend. I know they have other favourite locations too. but they generally aren't in suburban areas. There are always going to be boy racers, there certainly were even in our village in the UK. and most of the 'hoons' here are 17/18 yr olds with a clapped out old car with an expensive 4" exhaust pipe and stereo system that is their pride and joy. (ie a lot of noise and not much else).

[Miffy]

Driving on the 'other' (left hand side) side of the road is alot easier when you are driving in a right hand side car. (I hope i've got them the right way round!) :roll

and I agree with Veronica ... the hoons are something I hear about in the paper not somthing I see. It all goes on in the middle of the night somewhere away from my house.
Although walking back from the pub on late a friday night / sat morning, there are alot of kids in their cars on the 'strip' or Anyd bay road where all teh car lots and drive in burgers places are. They were all just standing around chatting and were friendly enough to use as we walked by. I didn't feel intimidated or anything.

[T-R3xx]

Though I have never driven in NZ, I have driven in a lot of countries, including the UK, and by FAR the worst place I have ever driven was Naples, Italy. Talk about taking your life into your own hands - and they drive on the same side as the US! (At least they are supposed to...) How about a cab ride in Naples? Woohooo!

[StevieD]

Here's a good little link about suicidal pedestrians

http://www.viralchart.com/media/clips/roadrage03.mov

[StevieD]

There are always going to be boy racers, there certainly were even in our village in the UK. and most of the 'hoons' here are 17/18 yr olds with a clapped out old car with an expensive 4" exhaust pipe and stereo system that is their pride and joy. (ie a lot of noise and not much else).

Quite right Veronica, nothing new there. Just about sums up youth in general really, a lot of noise and not much else... Just nearly been run off the road this evening by a couple of them racing over a blind bridge, the same spot that only a couple of months ago caused a couple of kids to come within inches of their lives.

Steve

[Going2NZ]

Being from the US and having been in NZ for a few weeks now, I have to admit that driving on the "wrong" side of the road is starting to look "right" to me. Not that I've tried driving yet - my goal is to be driving by the time the dogs get out of quarantine. How else am I going to get them to wherever home is? Anyhow, maybe its more a matter of getting used to it in a abstract sense before hitting the practical side?

Or I could be totally rationalizing. ;-)

[selchie]

This was recently posted on another forum:
http://www.ltsa.govt.nz/roadcode/contents.html

[jonSE]

Brian

you just have to get used to driving on the wrong side of the road - this will come easy driving a Right hand drive car. Yes Roundabouts are kind of strange to someone from the US just think of them as being the main road that just happens to go around in a circle. The one tricky thing is the right of way rules when you are turning right or facing someone turning right (a bit like being able to turn left on a red light in the US) Recomend by a cpy of the NZ road code and get yourhead around these rules. After 9 months here (with an NZ driving licence for the last 7 months) I still have to think hard about it.

[wanderingoregonian]

I was a bit worried about being an American driving on the opposite side of the road, but after a week of being in NZ or OZ I actually will have dreams of Oregon where I'm driving on the left side of the road.

However, its not a bad idea to take a couple days to be a pedestrian and passenger for a few days to let your brain start adjusting. I don't know why, but sitting on the left side of the car without a steering wheel initially was scarier than driving, the side of the road seemed so close! My brain knew how to judge distance from the right side of a car to the wall/fence/fog line in America, but had to learn how to do this on the other side (because my brain was used to an entire lane of space between left side of car and any road side structures). Now when I go over all I need to do is ride as a passenger or go for a walk for about 15 minutes near a busy street, and I feel very comfortable driving. It take me longer to remember which side of the car to get in (embarassing when family friends pick you up at the airport and you just hop into the driver's seat, then jump out when you realized what you did!)

Your brain switches pretty quick though, particularly when your have a steering wheel on the opposite side. You just keep the wheel side of your car on the center lane. Mutter to yourself 'look right' as you enter each intersection, then look both ways several times. Oh and try to turn on your turn signals a bit early so you have time to panic over accidently hitting the wipers, getting them under control, and finding your turn signals. And don't waste a second worrying about rotaries, they are well laidout in NZ (unlike the some of the American counterparts I fight my way that have a radius of about 1 car length in cities like Boston).

[Bern]

Here's my piece of advice - When just arriving in NZ, do NOT rent the car immediately after arriving from LA (or in my case Minnesota). I was too tired from the flight and trip, and the drive from the airport to the B&B was extremely stressful. Maybe it would have been easier with someone else in the car to help navigate. I also made a wrong turn into downtown Wellington and that didn't help...

The good news is that after 2 days, driving was fine - even in the city. The roundabouts were easy to maneuver.

The rental car company gave me a guide about the driving rules in NZ which could be summed up as the car on the right has the right-of-way and don't forget to look right when making a right hand turn.

[chuchi]

If I am on the road wanting to turn right into the entry way of a supermarket's parking lot, and there is a car wanting to exit the parking lot by turning right, who has the right of way? Assuming there are no give-way signs anywhere.

If the road code says entrances to parking lots should be considered as intersections, then the car exiting the parking area should go ahead, correct? But that doesnt seem to be the case each and every time I go there.

I'm getting confused! Is someone familiar with this situation? I'm having my practical test next week (coming from the Philippines, I have to take a practical).

[GeorgeM]

If I am on the road wanting to turn right into the entry way of a supermarket's parking lot, and there is a car wanting to exit the parking lot by turning right, who has the right of way? Assuming there are no give-way signs anywhere.

If the road code says entrances to parking lots should be considered as intersections, then the car exiting the parking area should go ahead, correct? But that doesnt seem to be the case each and every time I go there.

I'm getting confused! Is someone familiar with this situation? I'm having my practical test next week (coming from the Philippines, I have to take a practical).
My view is that you're correct - in theory the car turning out of the parking lot has right of way.

HOWEVER in practice many people assess the situation and create imaginary give way lines based on how they perceive the relative importance of the roads feeding the intersection. For that reason someone might consider themselves to be in a minor road since they are leaving a car park and therefore could sit and wait for you to make the first move.

More dangerous is where the person who should give way imposes an imaginary give way on the OTHER person (because they think they are on the 'major road'), then fail to give way potentially causing an accident.

So to sum up - it sounds as if you have it right as far as the book goes, but don't rely on your fellow drivers to put the theory into practice!

[chuchi]

Thanks GeorgeM.

I'll probably ask the testing officer before we start so as to avoid any accident.

[Debbie]

Good luck with your driving test Chuchi
Debbie