My preferred solution is to leave the car at home when I head to the cities. In the city, parking is a pain in the neck as well.
I'm an American with roughly 350,000 miles of driving experience plus 70,000 on a motorcycle. Each time I drive in Geneva I end up leaving the city with post-traumatic stress disorder. I can only imagine how much worse Zurich must be. I still have nightmares about driving in Brussels.
I grew up in a country driving on the left hand side of the road. I've even navigated in a rally team and been involved in quite a bit of motorsports. When I first moved and hand to drive on the right, I was very nervous. So take it from me, it's perfectly normal to feel nervous. Better that than be reckless and end up in trouble.
How did I conquer it? My girlfriend and I wanted to go on holiday and were interested in a few offers from various Travel Agents. I bought a map, plotted out 20 Travel Agents offices within the city, created a route and spent 2 days driving to and visiting them.
That was it. Within 48 hours, my anxiety was gone. Practice does make perfect, but when you're focusing all your efforts on the driving, I feel it might make you a little nervous, just as in an exam. The holiday is what I was foucsed on and the driving was only secondary. This helped me to relax and gradually made my driving second nature.
Do the same, go and visit another city or make an extended shopping trip and your fears will be conquered.
I can relate. I've had RHD cars all my life. Loved driving back home and in the UK. The car represented freedom and when I started driving on this side of the road, not only did my spatial awareness suffer (I almost took out a couple of side view mirrors of other cars ), I tend to panic when I try to change gears (hand will hit the door whenever I forget that the gear box is now on the right).
Trick is to start taking the car on less busier roads and gradually ease yourself into city driving just to build up your confidence. I still havent progressed into the city during rush hour yet - the junction at the Central tram stop junction during rush hour tend to make me sh!t myself. Just need to get past that mental hurdle.
If it is any consolation, I'm facing the same fear in reverse. After a lifetime of driving LHD, I'm moving to the UK and will have to do the RHD thing. My plan includes renting an automatic for a few days to get me started - that way I can concentrate being on the wrong side of everything without also trying to remember not to shift gears using the door handle. I'm also planning on starting off with a rental on a Sunday and taking back roads everywhere, trying to minimize the traffic I'll encounter.
Good luck, take a few deep breaths and soon you'll be fine on the roads here!
I used to drive for 8 years before coming here. First few times i drove with my other half sitting next to me so he could help me. He knows how to drive on the wrong side of the street! After that when i drive i stick only to one route or drive late at night or early morning when they are a few cars around.
Having a LHD car here also helped. Good luck!
Oh god - I had a friend give me a lift somewhere last week that involved going through there at about 5.30pm! I will never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever do it. Ever.
Anyways...thanks again everyone for sharing your experiences with me and helping me get a bit more confidence with driving over here. Made it all the way to Ikea at the weekend
One more thing, get a decent satnav and get used to using it.
It takes an enourmous amount of stress out of driving, obvioulsy only when you don't know where you're going!
I found the windscreen attachment placed mine too far away for easy touching and also was distracting at night. I found on ebay someone selling attachments for air vents, and now it's perfect.
Even Mrs Mainwaring goes out alone to Ikea now!
Driving in CH can be an expensive affair... but no worries, where there is a will, there is a way....
so, all you got to do it practice driving in the middle of the night when there is almost no traffic on the road... Drive on the Route which you are expected to take everyday (such as home to work) to make yourself aware of signels, turns, round abouts.....does and dont's.
Took sometime but it was practise, practise, practise! Took the car almost out everyday - initially with my hubby and eventually with screaming kids in the back! And it helped that I learnt to drive in South East London- which is a bit of a no go area for most timid drivers!
Don't be too bold but don't be too timid. Don't avoid times when traffic is out as you need some traffic to "help" you work out where you need to be
Speed is easy - 30mph = 50kph, 50mph = 80kph, 75mph = 120kph.
When I first moved over here, from the UK, I bought a LHD car. That actually added to my nervousness, as I had to not only get used to Swiss road markings and signs, but also the different driving position. The only way to overcome this was to drive a lot. If in Basel, I'd suggest practicing around Wettsteinplatz, Aeschenplatz, Kannenfeldplatz, Markthalle and Heuwaage. Once you can handle those, there's little that can phase you. Oh, and if you find yourself in the wrong lane, it may be better to stay there and sort it out in a safer place.
I've since driven my Swiss car in the UK, and RHD hire cars in the UK, and now have no problem switching from one to the other.
Aeschenplatz? You cruel person. Every expat I know who drives compains of Aeschenplatz - as well as a few Swiss!
I find here driving stressfull exactly because of radars. These days in Lausanne I count them more and more. Sometime it is even hard to find a road without radars ...
I find this particularly annoying when I'm driving in Switzerland. I'd almost rather than picked a limit of 110km/h for all of the autoroutes here rather than constantly changing between 100km/h for every tunnel, then 120km/h for open autoroute. You have to spend your entire time looking for speed signs (or wondering "did I miss one?") rather than concentrating on the road.
I don't mind obeying speed limits, and where the conditions permit, I prefer to set the cruise control to keep me under the limit. This strategy is much tougher to employ on Swiss roads.
A GPS can be a great tool in this regard because it shows you the speed limit and you don't have to look around for the speed signs
The GPS also shows you the cruising speed of your car so you can adjust your driving speed and stay under the speed limit.
You can also set the GPS to warn you when you're going too fast.
I haven't used a GPS in Switzerland but in Australia I found them very accurate. I've tried Garmin & Tomtom and as soon as I drove past a speed sign they updated the speed limit shown on the screen.
Yepp this is what we do in Switzerland and it works perfectly accurately
Not one speeding fine since Luke started doing this yayy.
The GPS in my car doesn't have speed limits in its database, and I can't really justify a second portable unit just for that purpose (particularly when I already paid so much for the GPS system in the car!)
Err that sucks
In that case, I feel for you!
I laughed at this Evilshell, I can still remember trying to change gears with the door handle when I drove around Gstaad and surrounds many years ago. And tried to wipe the windows with the indicators and turn left or right with the wipers going!
Despite driving for more years than I care to remember I think I've decided not to drive while I'm there and just rely on the excellent transport system. I might feel brave enough to hire a car one day.....
We hired a Ford in Melbourne which was like that.
It took me a while to stop using the wiper lever to indicate
French cars imported to Australia are like that too but you get used to it after a day or so.