The ‘right’ way to drive and brain rot, or not?

Greetings!

First, an interesting historical query: Why is it that Americans drive on the right side of the road while the British drive on the left? Well, a common misconception is that Henry Ford standardized right-hand driving in the U.S. by putting the steering wheel on the left side, but really he was just responding to driving habits that were already firmly ingrained, thanks to the Conestoga wagon. In the early 1700s, Conestoga wagons were the common method of transporting pioneers and their goods to western Pennsylvania, at that time a distant frontier.

“The wagon driver could ride one of the horses or sit on a ‘lazy board’ that slid out of the side of the wagon. But when more active control was needed, he walked alongside the horses, pulling levers and ropes,” Peter Valdes-Dapena writes for CNN.

The Conestoga wagon had the controls on the left side, close to the wagon driver’s right hand. It was intentionally that way because most people are right-handed. So, the driver would walk closer to the middle of the road and the wagon would be off to the right.

“Eventually, there was so much trade and traffic between Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and Philadelphia that America’s first major highway was created. The Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike Road opened in 1795. Among the rules written into its charter… was that all traffic had to stay to the right — just like the Conestoga wagons did,” Valdes-Dapena writes.

New York became the first state to mandate right-side driving in 1804, and other states followed suit.

The United Kingdom, on the other hand, drives on the left side even as the rest of Europe drives on the right. There are a few historical reasons. For one, the U.K. has a strong horse-riding tradition, and horses are traditionally mounted from the left. Cavalry soldiers mounted from the left so their swords wouldn’t hit their horses’ backs. It was easier to mount from the left side while staying to the left of the road. Also, keeping to the left made it easier for riders to draw a weapon with their right hand and ward off would-be attackers.

Convention also long held that the left side of the road was reserved for carriages and riders on horseback, while pedestrians – i.e. the poorer people – kept to the right. In the late 1800s, French revolutionary Maximilien Robespierre dictated that everyone should drive on the right, as one way of eliminating class distinctions. The upper classes likely went along with this rule because they didn’t want to stick out as aristocrats and risk the guillotine. This right-handed driving policy is said to have spread throughout Europe as Napoleon’s armies marched through. However, the U.K, separated by the English Channel, decided to go the opposite way.

Today, about 30% of the world’s countries mandate left-side driving while the other 70% or so stay to the right. Countries that were once part of the British Empire such as India, South Africa, and other parts of Africa tend to drive on the left. Japan also drives on the left, though it was never part of the British Empire. In Japan, the practice dates back to the Edo period (1603–1868), but is also due to its railway system, built in 1872, being on the left side. - Could watching too many TikTok Shorts actually be rotting your brain? The term “brain rot” is thrown around a lot by members of Gen Z these days, meant to describe “a supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state resulting from watching too much trivial or unchallenging content online.” While a person’s brain will not literally start rotting from watching TikTok – at least as far as we know – there is research to show that it definitely changes the composition of the brain, Christian Jarrett writes for BBC’s Science Focus.

A team of scientists based at Tianjin Normal University in China surveyed more than a hundred undergrad students and had them complete a questionnaire about their habits of watching short online videos. The students had to respond to statements like “My life would feel empty without short videos” and indicate how strongly they agreed.

The students who were the most attached to short videos had noticeable differences in their brain structure. These participants had more grey matter in their orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) – a region near the front of the brain involved in decision-making and emotional regulation – and in the cerebellum. The presence of more grey matter indicates a “heightened sensitivity to the rewards and stimuli associated with short video content,” according to the researchers, meaning students would become more easily addicted, and the habit of watching short videos was more deeply engrained and reinforced than those without the additional grey matter. Researches also found a greater synchronization of activity within multiple areas of the brain.

“The researchers suggested these functional brain differences could reflect a range of problems among the more addicted participants. Issues include trouble disengaging from videos and a tendency for excessive social comparison while watching them… Interestingly, the scientists found that many of the links between video addiction and brain differences were also tied to higher levels of envy,” Jarrett writes.

He is careful to give a couple of disclaimers: For one, the study was of a limited size; and two, society has a tendency to over-inflate the negative impacts of any new technological change. Still, the study is worth paying attention to. I can’t imagine that bingewatching Facebook Reels or YouTube Shorts is making any of us smarter (guilty as charged). It’s not boosting our creativity or encouraging critical thinking. Especially for young people with developing minds, too much screen time is robbing them of the chance to develop their imagination. So we need to be wise and set limits.

'Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.' Albert Einstein

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