where do they drive on the left side of the road

They drive on the left side of the road in about a quarter to a third of the world’s countries, mostly in places with historical links to the British Empire such as the UK, India, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. Many island nations in the Caribbean, the Pacific, and parts of Africa also follow left‑hand traffic rules.

Key regions

• Europe : United Kingdom, Ireland, Cyprus, Malta, Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands (Guernsey, Jersey). Most of mainland Europe drives on the right instead.

• Asia : India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau, Nepal, Brunei, East Timor, and others. Many of these countries adopted left‑hand traffic under British influence or early railway and road rules.

Other major areas

• Oceania & South Pacific: Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Kiribati, Nauru, Solomon Islands, Samoa, and several smaller territories. Road signs and car layouts (driver on the right side of the car) are all set up for left‑side driving there.

• Africa & nearby islands: South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, Zambia, Namibia, Mozambique, Mauritius, Eswatini, Lesotho, and a few others. Many are former British colonies that kept the left‑hand traffic system after independence.

Americas and Caribbean

• Caribbean and Americas : Jamaica, Barbados, Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Guyana, Suriname, Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, Anguilla, Turks and Caicos, and a few more territories. An unusual case is the U.S. Virgin Islands, which drive on the left even though the rest of the United States drives on the right.

Big picture facts

• Roughly 25–30% of countries drive on the left, but they include some very populous nations, so a significant share of the world’s people encounter left‑hand traffic.

• The pattern is rooted mainly in historical and colonial road and railway rules, not in modern safety research, so it differs sharply between regions that were or were not under British influence.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.