Queensland Motoring

For anyone considering moving to Australia, and Queensland specifically, there are a few key points you should be aware of when it comes to driving in Australia.

1. They drive on the left in Australia. Think England: This surprisingly doesn't take too much getting used to, however it was a few weeks before I was comfortable looking up and left to find the rear-view mirror. Up until that point I found myself instinctively relying on my driver-side mirror. Confusing the signal lever an wiper levers (also reversed) was resolved in about a week.

2. Terminology: There are a number of different terms you should be prepared to substitute or risk getting a few confused looks from people.
American/Canadian English => Australian English
Gas => Petrol
Traffic Circle => Roundabout
Yield (sign) => Give-way
Parkade => Car Park
Pickup (truck) => Ute
Trunk => Boot
Hood => Bonnet

3. Road rules: There are a few subtle differences in road rules, aside from the obvious disorientation of driving on the oposite side of the road.
a) No left turns on red lights. In Canada you can turn into traffic on a red light, it is an illegal maneuver in Australia.
b) Merging traffic does *not* have right of way. This is a pretty dumb one and I think explains why people don't seem to "get" how to merge here. More on this later.
c) No Stopping does not equal No Parking. This is a subtle one that got me here. No Stopping means no stopping, literally. In No Parking zones you would be able to stop the car for short periods provided the driver did not get out of the car and the car was running.

4. Requirements to get a license: Australia has a somewhat xenophobic culture, and getting a driving license here demonstrates this. For example, if you come from Canada or the U.S. where you're raised driving on the opposite side of the road, you can get an Australian license simply by getting a passing grade on the written exam. However, if you come from a country like Malaysia where they have similar road rules and drive on the same side of the road, irregardless of how long you've held a license, you need to write the exam and take an in-car driving test. I found this mildly amusing. However, I did come across a plausable explanation for this difference. That Australian driving authorities may base the requirement on country of origin depending on how difficult it would be to obtain a convincing fake driver's license.

5. Weather & day of week: Back in Canada, aside from the first couple weeks after the snow starts, and the occassional significant bad weather day in the winter; When the speed limit is 100km/h you can pretty much assure people are trying their best to be motoring along at between 105-110km/h rain, shine, day, night, etc. every day. My first experience in "the wet" was a real eye opener. I'm driving along the highway to the Sunshine Coast at around 100km/h and I was approaching some wet weather. Then I notice everyone slowing down to around 80km/h and I'm passing people thinking I'd missed a construction sign. So I slow down. No construction, no radars, nothing, just a really light drizzle. So I speed up again and start passing people, until "it" hits. It wasn't particularly hard rain, nothing more than I'd experienced in Edmonton, but I don't know if it's the humidity, or the combination of road and tyre materials, but when it starts raining it creates a haze roughly 2m high on the road that cuts visibility dramatically. You also need to be cautious in the city after a dry spell when it first starts raining. The road materials don't have to go through as wide of a temperature range here, so they contain a lot more rock, and when the oils from day-to-day wear start getting pulled up by the rain over this harder surface, it gets really slippery for a while. Combined with relatively hilly terrain it makes for some dangerous driving. Lastly, the day of week seems to really affect people's brains. Sunday is the most frustrating time to drive as there seems to be an unwritten rule that people drive 10km/h below the speed limit on Sunday. I've found no explanation for this.

6. Warning signs: Beware of "L" and especially "P" plates displayed in windows and stuck to the backs of cars driving around town. These are "L"earner drivers, and "P"rovisional drivers. There are special regulations applied when under the "P"-plate designation, but from what I've observed these are rarely enforced, meaning effectively that these are some of the most dangerous drivers you will encounter. There are constantly fatal accidents reported involving one or more "P"-platers, and my only sympathy is when one of these idiots is responsible for damaging/hurting others, or worse, taking them out with them. Frankly, the "P"-plate problem could be minimized and effectively solved with one simple measure: If you are provisional, you are limitted to driving a vehicle with no larger than a 1.6L, 4-cylinder engine solo, or must be under the direct supervision when driving a larger vehicle. Exceptions may be granted for tradies who might need to be able to drive a commercial van or Ute, but the vehicle would need to be inspected before aproval. Basically, restrict P-Platers from owning/driving "hoon"-ish vehicles until they get some real-world driving experience instead of video-games, and maybe they'll realize that those daft cars can and will kill them, the price for a quick thrill.

7. Merging: As I mentioned earlier, merging right of way is opposite here. Still, there is nothing more frustrating than driving along a highway and virtually coming to a stop when approaching merging traffic. Merging is quite a simple technique, think of a zipper. The key is that the faster cars are travelling, the more space people leave between vehicles which means to merge you need to accellerate up to the speed of traffic, pull up just behind a car, indicate, and pull in behind it, gradually easing back to a comfortable distance. Unfortunately this concept is completely lost here. Traffic instictively slows down which tightens the gaps between cars, cutting off the opportunity to merge in without forcing cars behind you to slow down even further. People start then merging from the left lanes to right lanes, slowing down those lanes, until the whole expressway has ground to a complete halt. When I first experienced this I driving down towards the Gold Coast. I was convinced there was an accident. 4 lanes of traffic were virtually stopped, but the cause was no accident, it was a merge between the Pacific Motorway and the Gateway. (2 lanes merging into 4)

8. Incompetent Drivers: Queensland in particular has a very, very high ratio of incompetent drivers. Just walk through a car park and see the amount of scrapes, dents, and other general damage these people inflict on their cars. In Canada I'd never been involved in an accident in over 14 years of driving. I'd had close calls, backed into a truck that was parked on an odd angle, and run off the road a couple of times, I had to dodge a couch in the middle of the highway once, and had a dumb cyclist throw himself into my windscreen in the dark (while the car was parked and unoccupied!)... But within 3 years in Australia, I have been hit from behind twice, side-swiped once, and had some ass in a 4WD scrape the entire side of my car while parked in a car park. The only parts of my car that haven't been re-painted are the bonnet and the roof. The number of accidents and fatalities reported in this country is mind-boggling.