Why do some cars have the indicator stalk on the opposite side of the steering wheel?
In your opinion, which is the ‘opposite side’? For me, and most of the Australian population, that would be the left-hand side.
If like me you have lived in Australia your whole life and are familiar with mainly domestic or Japanese manufactured cars like Holden, Toyota, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Subaru or Nissan you may not realise that some European cars sold in Australia have an indicator stalk where the windscreen wiper stalk belongs (on the left).
I recently drove my partner’s Volkswagen Golf, a make and model manufactured and assembled in Germany, a left-hand drive (LHD) market, and consequently has an indicator stalk on the left side of the steering column. At almost every intersection I would activate the windscreen wipers instead of the indicator prompting a small fright and great embarrassment.
I pondered why Volkswagen would put the indicator stalk on the wrong side of the steering wheel. After some research, it seems Japan and Australia, are part of a minority of countries that have left-hand traffic (driving on the left-hand side of the road) with the rest of the world adopting right-hand traffic.
When it comes to which side of the car the steering wheel is on, the general rule is that the driver will be positioned so…