Thoughts After 30 Days Driving in Ireland

I’m on a month vacation here in Ireland - staying the south near Wexford. Here’s my thoughts on drivers since we got here.

• People are really, really good at driving roundabouts. Almost all will signal their intent going into the roundabout, yield appropriately to the middle, signal their exit, exit properly. I’m super impressed by this. In Canada people have no idea how to use roundabouts.

• Driving on the N/M Roads is easy. Many of the R roads are okay - but after the wind storm there’s a lot of branches sticking out from the hedges and so I feel as though I may scrape the car. 80 kph on the bends of the R roads feels reckless to me. We have seen a number of cars over the line coming out of corners. L roads are often too narrow for my comfort. I need to figure out how to convince Google Maps to follow an explicit route so I can manage my time on L roads.

• People joke about BMWs being jerks. In my experience here - it’s Audis. Is it because they are company cars so the insurance and fuel are paid by someone else? The number of times I have had an Audi roar up behind me (even if I’m at the back of a queue) and then pass in an unsafe manner is just crazy.

• People will ‘charge the stop line’ - meaning go very quickly up to the stop line leaving doubt whether they will stop or not. They often stop over the stop line. This is a very common behavior I have seen here.

• It’s very strange for me to see tractors on M-level roads.

Overall though - I’m very impressed with the skill of Irish drivers. People are courteous, move to the left on highways, manage traffic circles very well. There are poor drivers everywhere but ‘Ireland Shite Drivers’ is not my takeaway.