Where can't we take our RHD vehicle?
 

Hi all,

A lurker here who has been reading various threads. One thing I was surprised to read was that right hand drive is banned in a few countries with various levels of strictness and enforcement. Some exempt temporarily imported vehicles. Is there a list of these countries on here? It is a little tedious trying to compile it all by hand. So far, I have:

El Salvador
Nicaragua if the border guards care
Chile
Bolivia
Vietnam

Thanks,
James

Gambia requires (or did) a carnet for RHD but not LHD after an influx of RHDs on the plymouth dakar

Ghana was a real pain to get into without a Carnet in our RHD Defender 90, took us over 4 hours to persuade the police chief to let us in, this was 11 years ago now, so not sure if things are better/worse currently. Our friend in a LHD German TLC got straight in with no Carnet.

Azerbaijan apparently applies the same 72 hour to get to Baku port rule to RHD cars that it applies to motorcycles, drivers of LHD can get temporary import for the length of their visa if they argue their case.

Oman, Saudi Arabia. No way to drive RHD in those countries as far as I know.

I was once refused entry to Uzbekistan in my RHD vehicle, but a little negotiation and persistence got me through. On three subsequent visits nothing was mentioned.

Got into Azerbaijan with RHD vehicle, was given 72 hours, didn't realise LHD cars could stay longer!

Nigeria and Cameroon are worth noting. It is entirely legal to drive a RHD in transit as a tourist, but not to import it permanently. So expect a lot of excited policemen to stop you thinking they will be getting a big bribe. No problems at the borders, they know, but not all policemen do, so you need some patience to explain your just transiting and its all legal.

Saudi = definite No. Had to go on the back of a truck driven by Ali Barber.

Was he the head of a band of forty hairdressers?

:-) ;-) It was a very close shave! ;-p

Friends entered with their German registered LHD Landcruiser and after a discussion were given a 30 day permit to match their visas.

jeez, I'm astonished, never knew there was so many places it was an issue, bigots!! don't they know the left is the correct side to drive on!!:scooter:

... and that's when the fight started. :D

This getting to be a pretty long list. Wow.

I drive our RHD a lot here in Tucson. Once I was I was in the left lane at one of our fair city's traffic lights, and a heavily tattooed kid in a highly modified Honda Civic pulled up to my right. He did a double take when he noticed the steering wheel was on the right, took his cigarette out of his mouth and asked if that was original. When I said yes, he grinned and said, "Man, that is TIGHT!". The light turned green, and he probably hit 60 by the time he reached the other side of the intersection.

I like driving RHD in LHD drive countries - makes it much easier to ask for directions when (frequently) lost!

But it can be a pain in the neck at toll-booths. You need a passenger in the left-hand seat to pay the toll - otherwise you have to unfasten the seat belt and climb across to be able to pay :(

Having watched a lovely young lady driving a LHD 66 Mustang attempt to enter the carpark at my office, I have to agree with that. She had to put it Park or Neutral, slide over, roll down the window, swipe her pass, then reverse the whole exercise rapidly before the gate came down.

Somewhere I have a video of a RHD classic Mini reversing through a toll booth in the USA/Canada. That option is unlikely to make you many friends though. :)

I had to do that on the Golden Gate Bridge the day we bought our Dormobile. I held up traffic and did not care. Since then it is either my or my wife in the passenger seat, so toll booths or park entrances are a non-issue.

The hardest part is when there is no passenger and you have to make a left turn at a busy intersection with no turn arrow.

I don't see the left turn problem. Its easily avoided by using a better approach angle, so what if you piss off a couple of numpties by doing it, you might save your life.

Anybody that's ever driven a box body lorry knows you have to do this at some 'angled' junctions even when driving on the 'correct' side of the road for the lorry, otherwise you end up pulling out blind!:funmeterno:

Left turns are only a problem where it is a 4 or more lane road and there is no turn arrow. If you are trying to turn left, the oncoming traffic trying to turn left blocks you view of the oncoming traffic traveling straight. At this particular intersection it is bad enough in a LHD vehicle if a tall delivery truck is blocking your view:

http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...1&d=1393007655

With a RHD I have to poke into the oncoming traffic lane to see. It is very helpful to have a passenger here.

thats how I ended up sitting in a police station in Kazan, after a lada drove into my landcruiser. I was stationary and he saw me and locked up quite some distance away, but locked up wheels don't steer so well! but because I was across the centre line trying to see it was classed as my fault, oh, and I was the foreigner!!

3 rights to make a left. Much safer. And you get to see a bit more. 'We' need GPSes with this function :palm: Maybe it can be called 'foreign safety'?

We had the 'RHD vehicles are illegal here sir' conversation with officials over much of West Africa (from Ghana to Cameroon mostly).
It didn't seem like it was a bribe they were after, more that no one had explained to them that the rule is only meant to apply to permanent imports.
The worst it got was with a female officer in Nigeria. She wanted to take us to the station to explain our situation to her boss.
It never amounted to more than a lot of chatting and pointing out that our Carnet entitled us to to drive our vehicle here TEMPORARILY as a TOURIST (even the Nigerian woman saw the light in the end) :thumbup1:

Does get a bit tiresome when it's multiple times a day, but stay polite. Getting agro will achieve nothing.

Happy travels

Do we start a new thread for "Where can't we take our LHD vehicle?" It seems to me that LHD might be easier in most cases when travelling. Not something I ever thought about before!

Living with a LHD vehicle in Australia is not easy, but some cars (like my Moke) are relatively easy to convert to LHD for a trip and then convert back again afterwards. :thumbup1:

Costa Rica
We have just given up trying to get our LR Defender out of a container after 2 weeks of trying in San Jose. We have even tried lawyers but there is a new 2012 law that apparently prohibits all right hand drive vehicle even temporarily passing through Costa Rica. I know some RHD vehicles got from Panama to Nicaragua last year and it may be possible via land borders now if the correct palm is greased. We had expected a problem with El Salvador and got a special permission via the land rover club . It looks like the Darien Gap is getting wider
Chris

Hongkong so I learned today!

Hong Kong?! So a mainland Chinese car can't cross to HK?

Now that would be all kinds of stupid! :clap:

my mistake!

Hong Kong does not allow left hand drive vehicles to be primarily registered in Hong Kong. However, Hong Kong registered vehicles may apply for secondary mainland Chinese registration plates, and these can be driven across the border to mainland China; likewise, left-hand drive cars seen in Hong Kong are usually primarily registered in mainland China and carry supplementary Hong Kong registration plates.

here's a really interesting article on the subject

Right- and left-hand traffic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

usually wikedpedia caveats apply!!

Damn, I want to go to Macau now, just to drive on this!

File:Lotus-bridge-macau.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cheers,

'65% of the world's population live in countries where people drive on the wrong side of the road'

100% of people live in countries where people drive on the 'wrong' side of the road.....

:smartass::smartass::smartass:

Liberia is a bit problematic with a RHD vehicle. At the Bo-Waterside border crossing from Sierra Leone there is a large note stating "No RHD vehicles are allowed to enter at Bo-Waterside!".

A British couple who went through there a few weeks before us got some trouble from the officials but were eventually issued with an official exception to transit the country. This piece of paper was for free but limited to 7 days instead of the 1 month validity of the visa.

Just to make things more confusing we went through without problems and even showed the big boss of the border crossing around our car to explain rooftop tent, water supplies and so on without him even mentioning our steering wheel. :D

Cheers
Fabian

RHD
 

see RHD vehicles | Drive the Americas

though others have past through. and seemingly entered Bolivia and Chile. Sometimes various officials may use the confusion in an attempt to get bribes.