Time for a dumbass question:
This has always confused me, and hopefully its simple to answer!
I hope I have this much right...
Offside is drivers side.
Nearside is passenger side.
Which is left and right? Do you look from the front of the car or the rear? (no sarcy replies please 
)
David 
[Edited on 18/5/05 by flak monkey]
Near is left
Off is right
Its looked at as if your sitting in the drivers seat. Nearside is nearest the kerb.
HTH
Dan
on a right hand drive car, the right hand side is where the driver sits. don't let anyone tell you any different!
Ta
I knew it would be simple really!
That must mean then that on a left hand drive car the seat where the driver sits is left??
easy way to remember it ......
near side is the "near side to the kerb", offside is the "offside to the kerb" in the uk.
always wondered about left and right but if its true about right is the side the driver sits on (in the uk) then i'll remember that.
It goes back to the days of horse-drawn carts. We decided ages ago that carts and horses should travel on the left of the road (for whatever reason).
Anyone leading a cart pulled by several horses would want to be on the hedge-side of the road to avoid being run over by carts and horses going the
other way.
So, when he's leading the horses, he has one near him (the nearside) and one off on the other side (the offside).
David
(head down behind the parapet while the pedants get to work... )
Driving on the left probably comes from joustiung. Holding the lance in you right hand (Most people right handed) you would pass on the left hand
side.
Nepoleon was left handed so the french chose to pass on the right. And nearly every other country followed the french way of driving.
This may be comlete bull, but its the best explanation for driving on the left or right i've herd so far.
quote:
Originally posted by David Jenkins
It goes back to the days of horse-drawn carts. We decided ages ago that carts and horses should travel on the left of the road (for whatever reason).
The Horses Butt to The Space Age
OK, for all you would be historians out there. Here's a true one that will make you think.
Does the statement, We've always done it that way ring any bells... ?
The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet 8. 5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used?
Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US Railroads.
Why did the English build them like that?
Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used. Why did they
use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel
spacing.
Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of
the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts. So who built those old rutted roads?
Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since
And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels.
Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.
The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. And
bureaucracies live forever.
So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman
war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.
Now the twist to the story... When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the
main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory at Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs
would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from
the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad
track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds. So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is
arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass.
... and you thought being a HORSE'S ASS wasn't important....
Sorry to be pedantic (Actually I'm not, I love it) Standard railway guage is 4' 8 1/2" but not because of the romans. Tramways had a
gauge of 4' 4". Mr George Stevenson, railway pioneer, added 4 1/2" to add stability. Why 4 1/2"? no-one knows.
It's true though. Ask "why do we do it that way?" and the answer is ususaly "because we have always done it that way."
Case in point. Locost bodies are narrow. Why? Because MkII Escort axles are narrow. Most people use sierras these days. So why is the body work not wider, to make use of the extra width of the sierra? Because we've always made them like that.
quote:
Originally posted by smart51
Case in point. Locost bodies are narrow. Why? Because MkII Escort axles are narrow. Most people use sierras these days. So why is the body work not wider, to make use of the extra width of the sierra? Because we've always made them like that.
(Wider, that is!) once did a job on foriegn vehicles and the spec said fit x to offside of vehicle. We did and after the first ten were finished realised the
deliberate mistake and had to rectify it.
Origin of standard gauge
There is no good reason for this particular gauge to have become the standard, other than perhaps it was more widespread than any other. In fact, many
engineers have considered it less than ideal. A smaller gauge offers cheaper construction but at the cost of restricted speeds owing to reduced
stability. Broader gauges are theoretically more stable at speed and allow larger, wider, heavier loads.
In the UK, a Royal Commission in 1845 reported in favour of the 4 ft 8½ in (1435 mm) gauge on the grounds that its network was eight times larger than
that of the rival 7 ft ¼ in (2140 mm) gauge adopted principally by the Great Western Railway. The subsequent Gauge Act of 1846
(http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/docSummary.php?docID=60) ruled that new railways should be built at 4 ft 8½ in (1435 mm), but nevertheless allowed
the broad gauge companies to continue expanding their networks. After an intervening period of mixed-gauge operation (tracks were laid with three
running-rails), the Great Western finally converted its entire network to the standard gauge in 1892.
A popular urban legend traces the origin of the 4 ft 8½ in (1435 mm) gauge even further back, pointing to the evidence of rutted roads dating from the
Roman Empire. This legend is mostly false, however, except inasmuch that it shows a historical tendency to place the wheels of vehicles approximately
five feet (1500 mm) apart.
also stevenson suggested that the gauge be larger as it allowed faster smoother trainss but as explained above the royal commision was swaied by the
cost (stevenson was GWR)
also as to american gauge
In the United Kingdom the standard gauge was at first 4 feet 8 inches (1422 mm) but it was soon widened slightly. In the United States, because some
early trains were purchased from the UK, parts of the rail system, mainly in the north-east, adopted the same gauge. However, until well into the
second half of the 19th century the UK and the USA had several different gauges of track. The American gauges slowly converged as the advantages of
equipment interchange became more and more apparent; the destruction of much of the South's broad gauge system in the American Civil War hastened
this trend.
I'll fetch my anorak...
David