Island Girl
Drive on the left! (But why?)
I’m a waitress at a restaurant in Havensight; I only work the day shift, and most of my customers are cruise shippers. As you can imagine I get a lot of questions – mainly “Where are you from?” (Boston), “How did you get here?” (by plane), “Why?” (Boston’s friggin’ cold five months out of the year…).
Yesterday I was chatting with a table and they asked me why we drive on the left in St. Thomas, yet all of our cars have the steering wheel on the left? I know I’ve been told the answer, but I couldn’t remember yesterday and I mumbled something about the previous country who owned St. Thomas probably drove on the left and we were too lazy to change it. I think I’m half right, but it’s a good question and I should have the correct answer.
I just researched it on the internet (doncha just love Wikipedia?) and here’s what I found out: The US purchased St. Thomas (along with St. John & St. Croix) in 1917 for $25 million (total bargain dude!). It was purchased from the Danish, who drove on the left to ‘limit losses of livestock’. When we took the island over we continued that practice, however as we are a US territory and the majority of our cars are imported from the mainland the steering wheel is on the left of the car.
Aha! I was just about right (patting myself on the back). Of course there’s a statement in there I’m curious about…the ‘limit livestock loss’ part, but I just spent another fifteen minutes Googling this and have not found the answer. Maybe Scott might hunt it down today and post it, or perhaps one of our readers knows the answer? Feel free to jump in!
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