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Comment by mrlonglong | Hacker News Reader

I thought Bolivia drives on the right? It doesn't make sense to have right hand drive cars on the roads in a country that drives on the right?

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There are some places where the wheel and driving side don't match what's usually expected.

Like Vladivostok, Russia, where cars drive right but due to its proximity to Japan some cars have the wheel on the right.

Or the U.S. Virgin Islands, which drives left, but most cars are U.S. imports and have the wheel on the left.

Or USPS vehicles in mainland USA which have the steering column on the right!

Yeah but they're built like that by design to make it easy for post workers to stuff mailboxes, not a quirk of location and ease of importation like the other examples.

Most of the road cleaning vehicles in Europe have the driver on the right side of the car, but that is a clear exception.

Or Myanmar, but things there are changing. Previously they drove on the left as in the UK. Then a fortune teller told the dictator to change to drive on the right, but the imported cars still had the steering wheels on the right. With the penultimate government, this was starting to change. There's a new government now, so who knows?

I've driven in a Bolivian chuto. The steering wheel and pedals are moved, but everything else stays where it was manufactured. It's odd to sit in the right sea as a passenger in front of a dashboard with no steering wheel.

Top Gear covered the dictatorial madness in Myanmar: https://youtu.be/9MDzTw7rHhE?list=PLWpVvJ8o7wzzTMdDpFCbxClHe...

Answered in the article

> Mechanics fix suspension wrecked by the drive over the mountains from Chile; others move steering wheels from right to left.

Moving a steering wheel seems like it would be more trouble than it’s worth, but I’ve not actually taken apart a Japanese car to see if the holes and mounting spots are all there.

These are countries where parts are expensive and labor is dirt cheap. The economics (of everything) work out vastly differently. It’s hard to imagine how different life is in countries like that without either living there or using a time machine.

pretty much every modern car was designed with both versions in mind. many cheaper cars have agnostic dashboards that don't take much to convert. and any globally distributed model is going to at least have a secondhand market where the parts for conversion are readily available. for some popular models where OEM dashes are hard to come by, there are full dashboard kits produced by third parties.

There are still some JDM models like minivan, K-car so I expect some cars are hard to modify.

You would still have to solve a lot of other issues, it's usually a huge process. You'd need to import a correct-side dashboard ensemble, a correct side drivers door card and electronics panel, sometimes move your master cylinders across, get a different sided steering rack.. etc. Wiring harness may not even match up for different sided cars. There's a lot of parts you would need, and I'm not sure what types of cars they're bringing in, but JDM parts are getting harder to find.

The chutos I've been in have had only the steering wheels and pedals moved, the rest of the dash stayed where it was originally manufactured.

It sounds like moving the controls is more about making it not obviously a chuto and less about drivability though the dash may be less needed than thought.

Since they're affordable and you can still use them as cars on the road, it makes "sense". Just the little issues like extra difficulty when overtaking.

The further east you go in Russia the more you see RHD Japanese second hand cars.

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