It may surprise some to learn that during the first 180 years of Charleston’s existence, the rules of the road required travelers to keep to the left side of the street. Considering our city’s British parentage, however, this fact can be more easily grasped as one of the many cultural practices borrowed from the “Mother Country.”
Charleston’s narrow, unpaved streets, most of which were laid out at the end of the seventeenth century, may have been amply commodious during the colony’s early years, but by the end of the eighteenth century urban traffic had increased dramatically. As the congestion of wagons, carts, carriages, and horses grew, tempers flared into an early form of “road rage.” Local newspapers offered a solution by reminding citizens of “The Road Paradox,” an English verse meant to advise drivers and riders of the proper etiquette:
The laws of the road are a paradox quite,
For when you are trav’ling along,
If you keep to the left you’ll be sure to be right,
If you keep to the right you’ll be wrong.
By the turn of the nineteenth century this traditional British practice had been the unwritten rule of the road in Charleston for many generations, but it was not codified by law until 1805, when City Council passed an ordinance requiring that “all drivers of carts, drays, wagons, and other carriages whatsoever, shall pass each other on their right hands, and shall always drive as close [to] the foot-way, with their left hand next [to] the same, as they conveniently can.”
This law remained in effect until the middle of the nineteenth century, by which time customary traffic practices had evolved into the more familiar pattern of driving on the right side of the road. Whether this change was a gradual process or a sudden shift is not known, but in November 1849 the stage was set for an official change. Alderman Edward North introduced to City Council a bill for altering the local rules of the road, and after the customary public readings, the new ordnance went into effect on January 1st 1850, requiring that from henceforth all drivers “pass each other on their left hand” and “drive as close [to] the footway, with their right hand next [to] the same, as they conveniently can.”
These laws were meant to create order out of the occasionally chaotic flow of traffic in Charleston’s narrow streets, but as anyone attempting to navigate the city’s thoroughfares during peak tourist times can attest, harmony does not always prevail. It may help to remember that our early Charleston predecessors who once plied these streets would be as confused by our present rules of the road as those visiting today “from off.”
