Driving Myself (Insane) in Dublin
Anyone that knows me well, or anyone that has read this blog for long enough will know that I did not drive until I was 25, when I moved to the US. I used to justify my lack of driving in Dublin to the fact that even if I had a car my commute would have been horrible, but secretly I was just a bit too lazy to get lessons.
Combine that natural inertia with regards to lessons/exams with the ludicrous insurance rates for those under 30 in Ireland and the fact that I could get by without a car and you have a fairly good idea why I didn’t do it. Once I started driving int he US, I found that I liked it and my sneaky suspicion that I should have been driving all along in Ireland seemed to be confirmed.
If nothing else, these last couple of days have confirmed to me that I was right all along, driving in Dublin is awful – the traffic is bad enough to make you want to cry, the road layout is insane (even to someone that knows it fairly well having grown up here) and itis far from a stress free environment.
My initial trepidation about driving on the left was quickly dispelled – I don’t seem to have a problem with the switch, but the general mayhem getting through the city was worse than I remembered. My American colleagues have probably been put off renting a car here in the future after this week. Of course I have picked one of the worst times to be driving – it has been raining constantly since I arrived and roads have even been flooding on occasion. Nevertheless, I think if/when I move back to Dublin I will be requiring a short commute to work – driving like I have been the last few days will not be an option…..