Fun fact: 1 out of 10 people in the world are left-handed. If you're left-handed, it feels like you're somehow unique in your own little way. However, most cars are made with right-handed people in mind, so you might have to do things differently when driving.
Because of this, you might the taught how right-handed people do things that you cannot do because you're left-handed, resulting in unforced errors, motor accidents, and potential collisions. So with that in mind, are left handers more of a danger on the road compared to their rightie counterparts?
Are Left-Handed Drivers Dangerous On The Road?
- Find Out The Truth Behind the Stereotypes: There's a stereotype that left-handed people are bad drivers—along with Asian people who are used to driving on the other side of the road and women who, when they first were allowed to drive by law, were ridiculed by the more experienced men as bad drivers. They're supposedly accident prone and clumsy because theoretically they have to keep doing right-handed gestures and movements they're not used to.
- Various Factors Affect The Leftie's Driving Style: According to studies, the brain of a right-handed person is different from a left-handed person. The brain's left portion in lefties is more active than the brain's left portion of righties. Therefore, the lefties' emotional conceptualization is different from righties. In turn, the avoidance mechanism in their brain compels them to turn the wrong way in light of how a car is designed more for right-handed drivers than left-handed ones.
- The Rules of The Right Hand: There are fewer driving rules for lefties in particular. In other words, the general rules of driving as implicitly for right-handers rather than left-handers. From car construction to driving rules, everything is made with righties in mind. Lefties have to cope, as in the case of them writing in a way that rubs ink on paper if they have their palm resting on it or how these southpaws have an unorthodox stance in boxing or baseball.
- Left-Handed Mode in Cars: Sure, we still don't have flying cars, but we have advanced car technology enough to make self-driving cars. As for the drivable vehicles, they can be operated (more) safely by left-handed drivers who have the follow the rules of the right by activating the left-hand mode of their ride. It simplifies the driving in light of how "left-leaning" the driver is, but he still has to get used to right-handed driving rules in the right-hand world.
- What's Left to Do for Lefties: Left-handed drivers have been coping with right-handed rules all this time. Even before left-hand mode in cars became a thing, there have been left-handed drivers who teach themselves by trial and error or muscle-memory on how to avoiding meeting accidents or turning the wrong way when faced with obstructions on the road by using all sorts of driving tips.