Headed to Ireland - Concerned About Driving

We spent a month driving in Ireland a couple of years ago and absolutely loved it. We rented our car, a VW Golf diesel, in England so I can't comment on insurance requirements except to say that I had to pay extra to drive a UK rental car in Ireland.

If you are not used to a manual change then I would recommend an automatic just to remove additional things to think about when negotiating difficult road junctions, roundabouts and hill starts.

Turning left on a red light is not allowed AFAIK, I don't recall ever seeing anyone do that.

see page 102 in the Rules of the Road for the light sequences and how to behave at them. (e.g. flashing amber means you MUST yield to pedestrians)

http://rsa.ie/Documents/Learner Drivers/Rules_of_the_road.pdf
 
Good advice from all. Mind your speed, use your passenger as a co-pilot, be extra careful on narrow roads especially in towns, and watch out on round-abouts - if in doubt just drive around an extra time inside the round-about. When we were overseas, we used to spend Christmas holidays in England and this was the most challenging driving - throw in very short days and a bit of snow and sleet and you've got a recipe for sore neck muscles. Be most careful at intersections - the life long instincts of managing right and left turns are hard to over-ride. As much as I love to drive a stick, I would probably go with an automatic just to reduce tasks. Not too many years ago, DW found that there are some differences in manual transmissions. Turns out that late model manuals won't turn over in Canada unless either in neutral or clutch depressed. On a hot day in the UK she reached in to start the car to get the AC going - car leapt ahead a foot. Ooops! Fortunately she was fine and nothing in front of it to bump! Now even our automatics won't start unless the brake pedal is depressed. Have a great trip.
 
These things helped us on our two trips to Ireland:

Get a GPS or bring one, only trust it when driving on main roads.
Get an Automatic
Get a Diesel car
Let DW navigate calling out directions instead of GPS crazy thing tried to get me into a farmer's field.
Bring or get paper maps
Get the full coverage with zero deductible, they put a hold on funds if you don't and can charge to fix vehicle if the basic insurance does not cover costs.
Avoid the back roads, the GPS tried to take us on all the small "R" roads, stay on "M" and "N" roads as much as possible, this is where the paper map comes in handy.
As mentioned earlier some of the speed limits are to high for the roads so stay to the left as much as possible to let faster vehicles get by.
Don't stop in the intersections, avoid the bus stop lanes too.
In small towns and villages, beware of pedestrians they like to cross the street anywhere.
 
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I went last year. Lots of good tips here. My son helped me with making sure I wasn't too close to the edge of the road. He has a good way of doing that without sounding like he's nagging or anything like that. Going through the middle of the older towns was the worst, narrow lanes with high curbs. Get the extra insurance. My card doesn't cover Ireland, most US cards don't. I scraped one hubcap. Luckily the guy at the car return kind of smudged it up, and when I asked what he was doing, he said he was making it look old so I wouldn't get charged!

I had two main issues. One was parking. I just couldn't get used to the position of my car from that perspective in a normal parking lot.

The second was checking my rear view mirrors. I would instinctively look up and to the right and not find the main rear view mirror, and have to look down for the side mirror. I couldn't get used to looking up and left.

Otherwise I got used to it pretty quickly. I think I even had a manual in Ireland, or maybe that was Scotland. Had to drive some of the R roads and I learned that as long as I was going a reasonable speed and keep my position in my lane, I'd be fine. Definitely stay sober. I only drank after the car was parked for the night. And I turned the car in when we got back to Dublin for the last 2 nights. Dublin looked like a hassle to drive in and we stayed in the middle of town where we didn't need a car.
 
We actually took a bus each day to pick up and drop off our rental car on the outskirts of Dublin because we were terrified to try driving in the city as virgin lefties. Makes for a good story even some 10 years later.

As does our first attempt to exit a roundabout properly, again as virgin lefties. It took three attempts as we just kept circling and circling. Finally I got the timing of yelling "Now!" down perfectly, and we got out.

And be prepared to be lost. A lot. A whole lot. The good news is that the Irish we encountered often realized we were lost before we did, and were quick to lend a hand. Delightful people, those Irish!
 
If you are coming from North America, minimize driving on the first day. The jet lag induced concentration deficits worsen the problem of driving on the left
 
ElizabethT said:
Delightful people, those Irish!
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Why thank you! 🇮🇪

If it makes you feel better, many years ago when roundabouts were being introduced, my (Irish) aunt drove around one......backwards. And lived to tell the tale!
 
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RunningBum said:
Had to drive some of the R roads and I learned that as long as I was going a reasonable speed and keep my position in my lane, I'd be fine. Definitely stay sober. I only drank after the car was parked for the night. And I turned the car in when we got back to Dublin for the last 2 nights. Dublin looked like a hassle to drive in and we stayed in the middle of town where we didn't need a car.
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I completely agree.
 
Work paid for us to go to Ireland for several months a few years back. They paid for a rental car too but we ended up taking the trains and Luas almost everywhere. The bus system is pretty good too.

Everyone was so friendly. When we were walking and carrying a lot of luggage to get on the ferry from Ireland to Normandy, a total of 4 different people asked if we needed help.

Have a great trip!
 
ElizabethT said:
We actually took a bus each day to pick up and drop off our rental car on the outskirts of Dublin because we were terrified to try driving in the city as virgin lefties. Makes for a good story even some 10 years later.
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My first time driving in the UK we had been in London for a few days and were picking up a car to drive out to Bath and Stratford for a few more days.

The rental place was a short walk from the hotel just on the other side of Hyde Park. We emerged from the underground parking right into the center of busy London traffic (there's a reason it's called the congestion zone!) and drove through town to Greenwich Observatory. That was quite the thrill for me, the driver, and my passengers. I was forced to "learn quickly."

You also do have to watch out for camera enforcement. A month after our trip I received a ticket in the mail from that first day because I had inadvertently driven down a bus only lane. Luckily, that was my only brush with the law on that trip.
 
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Thanks everyone. We rent our car after leaving Dublin. I don't even like driving in downtown Seattle!
I believe I opted for full insurance, but will double check. I do recall the rental being expensive. I think it is a manual (don't recall if it is diesel). I may change that if possible.
Good idea on the paper maps - my daughter has navigator responsibilities. I did make sure our B&B's have parking and within walking distance of Pubs :)
I factored in lots of time between B&B's so we wouldn't feel rushed.
I will read the links shared.
Thanks again....I'll let you know how it goes.


Sent from my iPhone using Early Retirement Forum
 
I second the don't drive if you are tired. We got off long flight from KL to Gold Coast, Australia and made the mistake of driving for five hours. On reflection, this was a mistake.

After a day or so we are fine. BUT....I find myself constantly turning the wipers on instead of the turn signals! Our Australian friends find the same when they are in Europe or North America.

Best thing I ever did for travel was learning to drive on a standard transmission automobile. Automatics are much more expensive to rent outside of North America and in many places we find standards more preferable.
 
I would often cut out a good sized cardboard arrow, point it left and tape it to the dash.
Roundabouts can be tricky but I'd always sort of slow down and follow the guy in front of me. If I had to go around two or three times to get it right, I didn't care.

Getting off of highway exits (not many highways in Ireland) can be a challenge as you often end up pointing in the wrong direction than where you wanted to go. You'd think: 'I want to go East, so I should exit here (before the overpass)...but it's the opposite and you end up pointing West!'

Go slow, have fun.
 
definitely get an automatic. the stick shift is on the "wrong" side... it also frees up a hand to cover your eyes on some of the very narrow roads when a truck is coming at you and you have no place to go except as close to the stone fence as you can....
 
brett said:
I second the don't drive if you are tired.
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In the 1990's, when my late wife & I were Rv'ing, we spent a little time at a Vancouver area campground - one of the RV rental companies, whose seasonal clients were primarily German or Dutch, was obliged, (due to the number of accidents), to institute a program wherein the renters, (who often arrived en masse on charter flights), were taken to the campground, given access to the RVs (but not the keys), upon arrival, and were not permitted to leave until the following morning after familiarization lessons.

I spoke to one of the company's reps, who explained that patrons had previously been arriving tired, in totally unfamiliar surroundings, and were put behind the wheels of vehicles larger than most of them had ever driven in their lives.....mayhem ensued.
 
MRG said:
It really wasn't hard except going through intersections and panic situations. ...Make sure you understand the rules of the road expecially round a bouts. ...
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It's pretty easy once you do it for a while. Just remember that the driver is next to the centerline. Roundabouts were the most difficult part for me.
 
I lived in Ireland for about 8 months. First, try to get a small, tiny car if you can. Since some of those roads are so narrow near Kerry, you will likely be thanking as else you will damage your rental car.. there just is too much brush in areas if you have someone coming in the other direction. I had a company car and it was huge which made parking almost impossible some days as the lines are narrower too as they gave us like the largest car possible and well the cow lanes are just not that wide.


The suggestion of thinking of yourself in the middle is the best suggestion.. driving always requires the driver to be in "danger" if they go over the line..


Also note, in the middle of Ireland (if you cross from Dublin to Kerry) most of the signs are in Gaelic...and you will come across signs where there is literally 100 signs to each town I think in the whole country... so great suggestion about having a physical map.. and make sure it shows towns in both Gaelic and English.


You will get use to it, its not too difficult as long as you keep these things in mind. I loved all my time there, I'm sure you'll have a wonderful trip.
 
mh said:
Make special arrangement for automatic if that's what you usually drive. And be especially careful in parking lots and pulling out into streets this is where I usually slipped out of " left hand side mode"
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Exactly. In fact, it was this very thing that almost caused me to take out a fire hydrant while exiting the airport in Scotland minutes after I'd taken delivery of my rental car. IMMEDIATE change of plans! Nuts to my original itinerary, I headed straight for the countryside and spent the next three days enjoying rural Scotland and staying at farm B&Bs until the whole left-hand drive thing began to feel "normal". Only then did I head for the big city (Edinburgh) and things worked quite well from that point onward.

I know someone advised to "think left" and I certainly agree. I'll add that in congested areas, plan your route to make "all left-hand turns", exactly the opposite of what you might do here. It similarly reduces the number of times you'll have to cross lanes of traffic.

I've taken several subsequent driving vacations in left-hand drive countries and they were much less intimidating than that first initiation.

Have fun!
 
Rent a small car - a really small car. The worst part for me was driving on a narrow road with a stone wall as the "shoulder" and a giant truck or bus approaching in the other direction. Did I say: rent a small car?
 
My word of warning is that the GPS we used on our last trip liked to send us down VERY narrow roads, sometimes just ruts in the ground out west. Staying on the left wasn't too hard to remember, but the sense of worry given I KNOW how fast some people drive on the less than 2 car wide roads was there a lot of the time. And the GPS didn't know about some of the new highway construction (this was back in 2010) so it got confused when we were driving back to Dublin.
 
As of yesterday, I just finished putting over 1,000 miles on a rental car in England and Scotland. Compact, stick shift diesel, and I was very pleasantly surprised at the great gas mileage. Just a tick under 60 mpg by my calculation.

The downside is that on tiny country roads even a compact car can seem huge. In places, there was only room for one car (not even a truck), and when we encountered someone coming from the other direction, it sometimes required one of us to back up quite a few yards until there was space to pass each other.

Another problem is that GPS (or "sat nav" as they call it) can sometimes send you down those incredibly tiny lanes, so you have to learn to ignore it.

I really don't have a problem with the right hand drive, and stick shifts are easy for me, but the very, very narrow roads are uncomfortable in the extreme for me.
 
An incident on our drive through Ireland a couple decades ago comes to mind.

We were driving through a seaside resort town in late spring during what the locals called the "bank holiday weekend." The place was packed with traffic, crawling through narrow streets lined with parked -- and double-parked -- cars (the Irish take pride in their anarchic parking ethics). A lot of time there was a foot or less of breathing room between our rental car and our fellow motorists passing in the other direction.

We eventually escaped the snarl and breathed a sigh of relief. I glanced at the side-view mirror on my door, and discovered it had been folded back. We must have touched mirrors with an oncoming car.

Fortunately the mirror on our car was undamaged. Hope the other guy had similar results.
 
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