10 Continental Driving Facts

Travelling abroad and seeing the world is a great thing – driving abroad…less so. Still, if you choose to take your car, rather than booking a cheap airport transfer, there are all kinds of strange things that you’ll see…

If you hate musical car-horns, you’ll love Greece!

Multi-tone horns are illegal in Greece, so if your car plays a kitschy version of La Bamba every time you need to alert a motorist to your presence, you may want to try and avoid driving in this country! But at least, after a long flight, you’ll be able to relax during your airport transfer without being serenaded by an orchestra of naff car horns!

White paint sales take a massive rise as lines appear on roads in Canada

The first white lines to divide road lanes appeared in Canada in 1930 near the Quebec/Ontario border. The person who came up with the idea we all take for granted now was an Ontario Transport Department engineer by the name of John D. Millar, who proposed the idea to improve road safety.

You haven’t seen gridlock until you’ve been to Japan

There are more vehicles per square kilometre in Japan than anywhere else in the world, unsurprisingly. The runner up for the most crowded place to drive abroad is a bit more surprising though – the Netherlands! So whether you hire a car or take a cheap airport transfer to get to your destination, be prepared for a long wait in gridlocked traffic in these countries.

1769: France presents the world’s first car! With speeds of up to 6kmph, this will never catch on…

1769 saw the world’s first “car” being built. Strictly for military usage, the steam powered machine was built to move cannons. Being incredibly heavy and only managing a top speed of 6 kilometres per hour, it’s perhaps no surprise that these new fangled car things failed to catch on outside of the army.

Holy cow! Watch out for road cattle in India

When you’re driving in India, if you’re stuck behind a slow moving bovine, you just have to sit it out. The cow is the country’s holy animal, and can’t be hit, moved or bumped if it’s in your way. So if you take an airport transfer or a taxi in India and your driver makes no effort to shift a cow out of the road, he isn’t just trying to run up the meter!

That’s not just a bridge – it’s a throwback to the Portuguese revolution!

When driving over the Ponte 25 de Abril Bridge in Lisbon, you’re on a structure seeped in glorious history. The “April 25th Bridge” is so named after the 1974 revolution, which ended on that day. It was previously named the Salanzar after the dictator before the revolution.

Tennis on Turkey’s bridge to Asia (presumably not a draw bridge!)

Here’s an unusual use for a road – a tennis match involving a Grand Slam world champion. On May 15th 2005, the Bosphorus bridge in Turkey hosted the world’s first tennis match to be played across a continental border! Venus Williams played a 5 minute show game against Turkish player Ipek Senoglu with one in Asia and the other Europe to promote the 2005 WTA Istanbul Cup.

Visible from Space: The Great Wall of China… and Belgium’s motorway

It’s well documented that the Great Wall of China can be seen from space, but according to Belgium’s Federal Affairs website, so can the Belgian motorway! More accurately, its lighting can be – astronauts refer to the glow generated as ‘the Belgian window.’

You may need to cram before your driving theory test in Spain!

If you thought the introduction of a driving theory test in England was a pain for anyone learning to drive, spare a thought for those trying to get to grips with Spain’s highway code – which has three times as many driving laws and rules to learn as the UK version. It contains in-depth areas on first-aid, car maintenance and vehicle loads.

And finally…

Better stock up on car sweets for this one…

If you were to drive for 4 years consecutively at 100mph, you may make your carbon footprint bigger, but you still wouldn’t have covered every road in the USA!

Okay, these driving facts may not help you with your travels abroad (though some of them may push you towards a cheap airport transfer instead), but they are unusual enough to be entertaining – who knows, they may win you a pub quiz one day!