A Canadian’s Guide to living Right-Hand Drive (RHD): left-turns, Tim Horton's on the Wrong Side and other things to get used to.
- the DREAM
- Sep 11
- 9 min read
If the idea of driving right-hand drive makes you sweat, relax—this is a realistic look at the real “quirks” (and why they’re not as scary as you think).
So you’ve just imported your dream ride from Japan…
Maybe it’s a Skyline, a Kei truck, or even a Honda Odyssey Absolute to carry your half of the kids' lacrosse team. It’s gorgeous, it’s rare (or just odd), and it’s staring back at you with the steering wheel on the “wrong” side.
Welcome to right-hand-drive (RHD) life, the ultimate badge of JDM authenticity. This guide covers the quirks you’ll face on Canadian roads: swapped wiper and signal stalks, left-hand shifting, blind spots that flip depending on which side you sit, and why your Japanese radio won’t pick up half your favourite stations. We’ll also look at the everyday realities of RHD life, from awkward drive-thrus to spotting oncoming traffic when a truck blocks your view.
Before you go postal on RHD, remember: Canada Post already did — and they’re doing just fine.
If you think right-hand drive is exotic, just ask your mail carrier. Canada Post has been running RHD trucks built right here in Canada for decades, because, surprise: reaching mailboxes from the left lane would be a nightmare.
Out in the sticks, rural postal workers even swap their own cars to right-hand drive—or import JDM beaters straight from Japan (B-Pro)—to make the job doable. And it’s not just the posties; some garbage collection fleets spec their rigs with right-hand drive too, because efficiency beats tradition every time. The kicker? These aren’t fringe oddities. They’re insured like any other vehicle—Hagerty, Mitch Insurance, you name it. If the people hauling your bills, your junk flyers, and your recycling can manage RHD in Canada, you’ll be fine.
5 Things Every Canadian Learns About Driving Right-Hand Drive
So you’ve taken the plunge and bought yourself a JDM import. Congrats—you’re officially living the dream and also about to rewire your brain. Driving right-hand drive (RHD) in a left-hand drive country comes with quirks you didn’t think about when you hit “bid” on that Skyline.
Some of them are laugh-out-loud silly.
Some of them are genuinely serious.
All of them are worth knowing before you hit the road.
Tip #1 - Controls and Left-Hand Shifting
It's 99% the same even if it is on the other side: “Clutch, brake, and accelerator pedals are the same, but the shifter is on your left, which takes some retraining.” (Dorman Shop Press) So too, the classic " P-R-N-D " you see on automatics here use the same letters in Japanese.
So on a JDM gear shifter you’ll see:
P (パーキング / Pā-kin-gu) → Pākingu
R (リバース / Ri-bā-su) → Ribāsu
N (ニュートラル / Nyū-to-ra-ru) → Nyūtoraru
D (ドライブ / Do-rai-bu) → Doraibu
But always as English letters, not Japanese characters.
So no shifting into "突撃"... kudos if you know that kanji ;)
Heck, there isn’t a Japanese word for drive. The word “drive” in Japanese (as in to drive a car) is Do-rai-bu
Automatic
If you bought an automatic, you won’t notice much of a change—until you need to shift. And since you (hopefully) aren’t going from Drive to Reverse on the 401, this all happens in parking lots. The first few times you’ll instinctively grab at the door armrest, then realize—nope, wrong side. Eventually, you’ll give up and just keep both hands at the classic 10-and-2, like a nervous driving school student.
Manual
If you bought a manual (good choice), get ready to teach your left hand some new tricks. The gear pattern doesn’t change—first is still top-left, fifth is still top-right—but unless you’re a southpaw, you’ll be rowing gears with your non-dominant hand.
At first, it feels like trying to write an essay with your off-hand: clumsy, slow, and slightly embarrassing. The good news? Muscle memory kicks in faster than you’d think. Within a week, you’ll stop smacking the passenger seat while reaching for third. And within a month, you’ll forget you ever thought it was weird.
After that, it's all Paul Walker level street cred.
Bonus: if you ever find yourself in the UK, Japan, or Australia, you’ll look like a local instead of a confused tourist.
Tip #2 - The Great Indicator–Wiper Swap
One of the first surprises is the stalk layout on the steering column. In most JDM cars, turn signals are on the right stalk and wipers are on the left—the exact opposite of what you’re used to in North America. Cue the rookie mistake: flicking on the wipers when you meant to signal a left turn.
As Jalopnik bluntly put it, “Expect to screw this up for at least the first few days, maybe longer.” (How To Drive A Right-Hand-Drive Car). If you also have a LHD car our regularly drive, expect to sigh as you 'unlearn this' in the first 5 min every time you swap.
Tip #3 - Lane Positioning and Sightlines
The bigger challenge isn’t inside the car per se—it’s how you see the road. Sitting on the right changes your reference points. You’ll feel closer to the curb, further from the center line, and suddenly wide turns feel… wider.
Jalopnik describes this as an adjustment of spatial awareness. Drivers often feel like you’re drifting toward the middle of the road, only to find 1/2 your car in the oncoming traffic lane. It takes a concerted mental effort initially to change your mental marker from the 'yellow line in the center of the road' to the curbside. Of course, if you do that too much, your rims pay the price. Forum users echo this. One Canadian importer wrote: “When people first start RHD, they hug the curb too much or rub it on turns. You learn quick.” (Reddit r/JDM)
Along with your driver's seat, your blind spots move too!
The left-side spots increase while your right side spots narrow.
Keep your head on a swivel and move your head when making turns to make up for blind spots (Jalopnik). This is the best way to keep you and other drivers safe. In many ways, knowing this issue forces you to be a safer and more cautious driver.
Specific blind spots become the biggest issues in 2 scenarios: overtaking and left-turns at intersections
Overtaking
You’re in a sleek RHD coupe—and you're not in the driver’s seat; you’re pressed against the door, turning your head like a traffic surveillance camera just to overtake on a single-lane road.
Be careful. One JDM owner on Reddit asserts that the blind spot in RHD cars poses biggest risk increase for saftey while attempting to overtake vehciles on LHD roads. Studies back this up, finding that mismatched drive configurations can boost accident risk, especially during overtaking or lane changes (ScienceDirectEconStor). So, while it might be tempting to pull a fast and furious on that semi in front of you, be more cautious than you normally would. You'll have to pull into the oncoming lane to see around that vehicle! If someone’s riding shotgun, have them do the lookouts; if not, wait for safe passing zones. Your hood will thank you.
Left Turns
At even the best of times, left turns with oncoming traffic is dangerous in a LHD situation. While sources vary, NHTSA reports around 22% of intersection accidents involve left turns, underlining why visibility matters so much.
Notice the yellow car?
You’re perched on the right—like a passenger on the wrong side—and now you’ve got to thread through oncoming traffic using nothing but your right eye and a prayer. Thick A-pillars? Check. Dashboard blocking your view? Double check. Thick A-pillars can hide pedestrians or cyclists until it's too late—especially during left turns at crosswalks.
Yeah... that yellow car ain't as visible as in the first image.
Be smart:
Tip forward
tap the turn signal early
look with your neck, not your mirrors
... and if needed, ask your co-pilot to spot your breakthrough.
If you’re tempted to just dart across—don’t. This isn’t Mario Kart, and there’s no reset button when you misjudge a gap.
Sitting on the right side means you don’t have the cushion of a passenger seat; you’re the one taking the full brunt if you’re wrong. Funny as it sounds, the punchline here is serious: better to wait five seconds than gamble with your front end (and your spine).
People drive RHD in Canada every day and navigate this issue successfully. In fact, it forces you to be a more cautious and aware driver, knowing that your blind spots are bigger.
You can do it.
Solutions for what you can't see: because your neck deserves a rest
If your neck has had enough of swiveling every five seconds, you’ve got options.
Some RHD fans hack in a little camera mounted on the left mirror or bumper, feeding onto your double-DIN screen—like giving your car a second eyeball (RevScene ).
If you’d rather buy than build: there's a shark-fin-style blind‑spot camera kit on Amazon—waterproof, easy to dust onto your door, with a neat 6.25‑inch screen to show exactly what's hiding in that awkward corner. There are also some dashcams that have monitor displays that will do in a pinch as well.
But perhaps the best solution is patience and caution.
Be Canadian and be patient. Take your time and wait for clear traffic.
Tip #4 - Infotainment Quirks (a.k.a. Japanese Radio Roulette)
That OEM Japanese head unit? Fun in theory; useless in practice.
Japan’s FM radio band is 76–95 MHz, so most North American stations won’t tune properly. (Wikipedia: FM broadcasting in Japan). Add to that: menus in Japanese, outdated map DVDs, the occasional mini-disc player and features designed for Tokyo traffic. Most owners swap the whole system for an aftermarket deck within weeks, footing a $300-$1000 bill.
There are so many quicker and cheaper fixes to this - the cheapest of which is to just grab a wireless portable carplay device from online. After sticking this to your cars windshield, this willl give you hands-free Bluetooth for your phone, a GPS and potentially a backup cam and dashcam that could sub as a periscopic car interior mirror set, helping address your previous 'left turn' dilemma
Tip #5 - Daily Life in RHD
Living with RHD in Canada is equal parts cool factor and logistical comedy:
Drive-thrus: You either back in like a stunt driver or crawl across the seat for your double-double amid the shocked glances of the attendant.
Parking garages: Ticket machines are always on the left—keep your arm limber.
Curious strangers: Expect the gas-station classic: “Hey, is that legal here?”
Yes, it’s legal—as long as the car is 15 years old or more and meets import standards. Transport Canada makes this clear:
My wife's testimonial
My wife is from Saskatchewan, and she’s a tiny thing—barely five feet tall. Size wise, many JDM cars are even better for her than North American cars. She’s also a lifetime automatic driver, raised on nothing but big, bland North American cars driving in the similarly big and bland Prairies where 'broadsided by a moose' is statistically more likely than being cut off by a BMW. So when I handed her the keys to a right-hand-drive Toyota Prius I’d imported for her, She gave me the kind of look that said she was already drafting the divorce papers—just needed to decide whether right-hand drive was covered in “irreconcilable differences”.
The first drive was peak nerves—white knuckles, laser focus, and me silently praying she wouldn’t confuse the wiper stalk for the turn signal at an intersection (she did, but hey, we all do). But here’s the kicker: she took to it shockingly fast, even by her own admission. Within a week, the nerves melted. By week three, she’d gone from hesitant to downright blasé—enthusiastic even, like she’d been driving on the “wrong” side her whole life.
She’s still a cautious driver who rigidly sticks to the speed limit, but she’ll be the first to admit something unexpected: the visibility is (in her opinion) better. In fact, she swears she can see some blind spots more clearly in the Prius than she ever could in her old Hyundai Veloster (which I feel is more a credit to the crappiness of a than the RHD). Even better, she’s noticed that people pay her more attention when they realize the steering wheel is on the “wrong” side. Her theory? If they’re gawking at her car, they’re also paying more attention to the road around them—an accidental win for road safety.
And if a five-foot prairie girl can adjust to right-hand drive in three weeks flat, what’s your excuse?
Final Thoughts From the “Wrong” Side
So yeah—right-hand drive in Canada isn’t some mystical skill reserved for postal workers and garbage trucks. It’s a mix of funny little mistakes, a few blind spots, and the occasional wiper-signal identity crisis.
Got your own JDM stories from the Great White North? Drop them in the comments—I want to hear about the drive-thru gymnastics and the “oops, wrong stalk” moments.
And if you’re still thinking about making the leap, hit that subscribe button and check out my free import calculator. Because math makes importing less scary… and you deserve a Skyline, not just another Civic.