Where can I learn about rules of the road in Europe?

Upvote:0

The rules differ between countries. Differ countries don't even drive on the same side if the road, and this is far from the only distance

I start a community wiki answer, which everyone is welcome to edit with links to different countries' rules.

Ireland

The book "RSA Rules of the Road" contains the traffic rules, with simple explanations and diagrams. A PDF version can be found on the RSA site.

UK

The Driving and Transport web pages contain a raft of information including the Highway Code, penalties & fines, and driving on a non-GB licence https://www.gov.uk/browse/driving

Upvote:1

  1. Parking rules can be very obscure in Slovenia. I once was trying to pay for parking place in the centre of Maribor, installed local mobile app and even made a five euros transfer to only find out that payment is non-available due to some reason, and after some accidental googling to discover that parking is free from 17:00 till 8:00 in the town. Locals use the rule to park cars in central streets overnight.

  2. 95 and 98 are Octane numbers which characterize fuel's sustainability against detonation (0 is that of n-heptane, highly prone to detonation under pressure, 100 is that of iso-octane, very unlikely to detonate, 95 and 98 are much closer to the latter than the former). 95 is more or less standard petrol currently in use in european cars. Please check carefully whether your car runs on petrol or diesel fuel (ask rental agency staff and check at the car's tank opening), as mistakes are fatal to the engine when filling the tank.

Upvote:1

It's not a small thing to make the transition from driving in one country to another, especially as in your case, when the rules are quite different from your home country. I live in the UK, but even after many years of driving in France and the USA I still find it some effort to make the transition to looking for different traffic conventions.

There will be driving lessons available, but fitting them into your schedule may well be tricky. Do you perhaps have a friend who would be a helpful passenger for a few hours?

For things like fuel and parking you can surely ask people. I'd be most concerned about driving safely within the law. So you need to find out about the meanings of road markings and signs. The key things to look for:

  • Signs indicating one-way streets, no-entry signs.
  • Speed limit signs
  • Signs about which lane to be in

There are quite a few online resources to help:

The RAC overview gives some information, note in particular that one rarely sounds the car horn - my memory of India is that this is not the case over there!

Here is a list of Slovenian Road signs

As you say, there are a huge number of different signs, but there are different patterns:

  • All the warning signs are red triangles, their meaning can usually be guessed.
  • Prohibition signs are red circles, note especially the No Entry sign.
  • The STOP sign is a red octagon - no matter how little traffic there may be, do stop at any junction with these signs.
  • Blue Circles have mandatory instructions. Again the meanings are not hard to deduce.

so actually you don't need to memorise all of them.

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