July 29, 2026
Keep calm and drift right
The only road in London where you have to drive on the right
London’s bizarre right-side road sparked pub-quiz flexes, Waymo jokes and a metric meltdown
TLDR: Savoy Court is London’s only road where cars drive on the right, a quirky setup meant to keep hotel and theatre traffic moving. Commenters turned the factoid into a riot of jokes, from confused self-driving cars to UK-vs-America digs and pedantic corrections about how much of the world actually drives left.
London trivia should have been the easy part: Savoy Court is the one road in the capital where drivers keep to the right, a strange little exception built to help taxis drop off theatre crowds without clogging the hotel entrance. There’s even an old-school theory that it was designed so wealthy women getting out of horse-drawn carriages wouldn’t have to walk around them. Fancy? Yes. Mildly ridiculous? Also yes.
But the real action was in the comments, where readers instantly turned this into a full-blown Britain-is-weird festival. One person brought up Swindon’s infamous Magic Roundabout, basically saying, “Cute London fact, but have you seen this traffic nightmare?” Another gleefully added that the road is near London’s last sewer-powered gas lamp — because apparently the city’s secret brand is now backwards driving and Victorian fart tech.
Then came the comedy gold: one commenter claimed they watched a Waymo self-driving car try the road and simply carry on driving on the left, which is exactly the kind of robotic confusion this story deserves. And yes, there was a classic UK-vs-America jab too: “London will switch sides when America goes metric — i.e. never.”
Not everyone let the article off lightly, though. One commenter pushed back on the line about driving “like much of the rest of the world,” pointing out that 35% of the global population drives on the left. So what started as a quirky London fact quickly became a comments-section cocktail of correction, one-upmanship, geography pedantry and top-tier transport banter.
Key Points
- •The article says Savoy Court is the only place in London where drivers are required to drive on the right.
- •Savoy Court is a private road serving the Savoy hotel and theatre near the Strand.
- •The right-side traffic arrangement is described as a way to help taxis drop off and pick up passengers without blocking the hotel entrance.
- •The article also mentions a historical theory linking the layout to how women exited horse-drawn carriages.
- •Road markings reading 'IN' and 'OUT' are now used there, and traffic congestion in the 1960s once required a police officer to direct vehicles from the Strand.