You definitely need a car in the US, and so I found out what driving in New York was like

My friend told me it wasn’t so hard to drive on the right in America, it was just about confidence, and seeing that you need a car to get anywhere in the US I decided to give it a try in Brooklyn, writes Holly Baxter

Cyclists and pedestrians in the area seem to have a death wish (Getty )

When I was 17 years old, I passed my driving test (third time) on British roads in my trusty secondhand VW Polo, which I named Alfie. Me and that bright blue machine went powering down country roads and dual carriageways on all sorts of exciting expeditions, leaving a trail of the greatest hits of Rihanna and Death Cab for Cutie in our wake. Alfie was there when I dropped off my boyfriends’ drunk friends after pub nights, when it was my turn to shuttle my friends to and from the shopping centre, and when I went on long nights “to the cinema” with sixth form admirers. He was small, reliable and his 1.2 litre engine and manual gearbox was everything I needed. His CD player was bang up to date for the times as well (I presumed iPods were probably a passing fad.)

I knew a few people when I was 17 who chose to learn to drive in automatics, and I considered them fools. “Not proper drivers” was my stepdad’s summary of the situation and I believed him: what if I was suddenly forced to jump into the driving seat of a car in some kind of nebulous emergency situation and I was too freaked out by the clutch to save the lives of everyone relying on me? It never crossed my mind that, quite a few years later, I might be living in a country when driving a manual is considered oddly niche, the domain of “motor enthusiasts” and the over-80s. And even when I did move to New York City, I laughed at people who kept a car in a place where public transport was abundant and the pavements easy to traverse.

The most enlightening part of the experience was finding out how simple parallel parking is when you’re driving a $40,000 vehicle installed with a rear camera feed which shows you how to park