Dumb as an ox

Seen via Digg, an interesting article on why countries drive on the side of the road that they do. For much of the world, it was essentially whether you were colonized by the Brits or the French.

"Since 1 December 1922 there had been a problem for automobile drivers who crossed the border between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick - on that date New Brunswick had switched to driving on the right-hand side of the road, while Nova Scotia remained with the left-side rule. For four and a half months, drivers crossing the border in both directions had to remember to change to the other side of the road, and even with the relatively low traffic levels of that day there were some near- misses resulting from this conflict."

In Lunenburg County, 1923 is still known as The Year of Free Beef; the price of beef dropped precipitously because oxen which had been trained to keep to the left could not be retrained — oxen are notoriously slow-witted — and many teamsters had to replace their oxen with new ones trained to keep to the right; the displaced oxen were sent to slaughter.

There's a handy color-coded chart at the bottom of the page that shows which countries drive on which side.