Around 75 countries, territories and dependencies drive on the left; the other 165 or so drive on the right. By population the split is closer, because India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Japan and Nigeria's neighbours push the left-hand total past two billion people. Almost every left-driving country was once British-governed, which is why the map of left-hand traffic looks so much like a map of the old empire.
Why some countries drive on the left at all
Keeping left is older than keeping right. Mounted travellers passed on the left so their right — usually sword — hand faced an oncoming stranger, and horse teams in Britain were driven from a seat on the right, which made left-hand travel natural. France and the United States moved to the right during the late 18th and 19th centuries — partly post-revolutionary politics in France, partly the big wagon teams of North America where the driver walked beside the rear-left horse. Britain formalised keep-left in 1835 and exported it across its colonies. Where the British influence faded or never reached, right-hand traffic usually won.
Europe
- United Kingdom and Ireland.
- Malta and Cyprus — both former British possessions in the Mediterranean.
- The British Crown dependencies: the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey.
- Gibraltar is the odd one out: a British territory that drives on the right, because it borders Spain and almost all its road traffic crosses that frontier.
Sweden was the last mainland European country to keep left. It switched to the right overnight on 3 September 1967 — "Dagen H" (H for högertrafik, right-hand traffic) — to match its neighbours and the left-hand-drive cars most Swedes already owned. Iceland followed in 1968.
Africa
Left-hand driving in Africa runs down the east and south of the continent, tracking former British East Africa and the southern colonies: South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Eswatini, Lesotho, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia's northern neighbours, plus the island nations of Mauritius, Seychelles and the Comoros. Nigeria and Ghana both started on the left and switched to the right in the 1970s to match their French-speaking neighbours, which is why West Africa is now almost entirely right-hand.
Asia and the Middle East
- South Asia: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldives all keep left.
- South-East Asia: Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and East Timor. Thailand and Indonesia were never British — Thailand simply never changed, and Indonesia kept the Dutch-era left-hand rule.
- East Asia: Japan drives on the left although it was never colonised; the custom predates cars and was reinforced by a 1872 railway built with British engineering. Hong Kong and Macau keep left, unlike mainland China.
Oceania and the Americas
Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Fiji and most Pacific island states drive on the left. In the Americas the left survives only in the Caribbean and on the Guianas' shoulder: Jamaica, the Bahamas, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, the smaller Eastern Caribbean states, and — on the mainland — Guyana and Suriname. Every other country from Canada to Chile drives on the right.
The countries that switched
- Sweden (1967) and Iceland (1968) — left to right, to match continental Europe.
- Nigeria (1972) and Ghana (1974) — left to right, to match their neighbours.
- Myanmar (1970) — left to right by government decree, though most cars are still right-hand-drive imports, which makes overtaking notoriously dangerous.
- Samoa (2009) — right to left, the only country to switch to the left in modern times, so it could import cheaper used cars from Australia, New Zealand and Japan.
Left-hand-driving countries cluster on the map. Filtering the flag games to Africa or Asia is a quick way to learn which nations sit in that former-British band.
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