This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Windsor, England • I need to report a miracle. I just finished driving a car 400 miles on the wrong side of the road and didn't kill anyone. Seems the Old Man was wrong all those years he yelled at me that it couldn't be done.

It helped that everyone else was on the wrong side of the road as well. We're in England, where they do any number of things the wrong way around.

Renting a car here seemed a perfectly good idea when we initially planned our trip from the safety of our own home. Things always do when the factual problems associated with them can easily be dismissed as nuisance theories.

The fault was mine. It made no sense to hire an expensive taxi to take us places when a simple look at a map indicated that driving the width of England was no more troublesome than driving from our house in Herriman to Santaquin. Granted, the entire way would be on the wrong side of the road, but I'd done that before as well. I could handle it.

My wife: "You're sure?"

Me: "Ask Sonny. He's seen me do it."

The true nature of the undertaking didn't set in until several weeks later, when we approached the car-hire counter in Norwich. By then, we'd been in England a week. We'd had plenty of opportunity to observe British drivers.

Me: "We would like to rent a car made entirely of Nerf material, with the onboard guidance system of a predator drone, and a robot driver that communicates in unaccented English."

Rental Agent: "Right then. Americans, are we?"

We were given a brand new Nissan Whateveritwas with a steering wheel sticking out of what in America would be the glove box. Fifteen minutes later, we merged out of the lot and into battle.

Being proud of one's ancestral heritage in no way guarantees surviving its modern incarnation. My English ancestors were stout-hearted, loin-girded, resolute workers of the land, but any descendants still living here — at least those who drive — are probably nuts.

There are a lot of reasons why someone with less-than-ideal driving habits in America should never consider driving in England.

First is the roundabout. The best way to describe this road feature is something along the lines of a traffic centrifuge or a maze for idiots. Vehicles enter the roundabout and drive in increasingly wider circles until they are hurled onto another road, which, if they're lucky, is the one they wanted. If not, they have to go back through it.

We have roundabouts in Utah, the difference being that they operate in the proper direction: counterclockwise. I still hate them.

The English love their roundabouts and jealously guard them with much indignant honking. After several misadventures, I was so fed up with being horn-cursed that I began motioning for other drivers to pull over so I could apologize to (and on) their faces.

Next are the English roads themselves. Most country roads over here are no wider than the sidewalk in front of my house. This means that traffic hurtles past within inches of me — and on the wrong side of the road.

English country roads have a quaint habit of changing names and directions every 600 yards or so. "King's Road" will become "Knave's Way," and then "Dung-Upon-Mutton Lane," making it impossible to find the #$%@ road the map says is there.

Finally, there is the English pedestrian. If you encounter one in the roadway and stop, he or she will retreat to the curb and insist (sometimes to the point of a polite shouting match) on you proceeding first.

I thought they were being annoyingly polite until my wife pointed out that maybe they simply recognized an American driver and didn't trust him not to run them over.

We turned the car in yesterday. Miraculously, there wasn't a scrape or a dent on the outside. The inside was another matter. My wife had stomped a dent into the floor in the exact place where the brake would be back home.

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/stillnotpatbagley.