‘I wish they knew I was a tourist!’: LBC hits the road with the inventor of T-plates
One blast of a horn and one angry pointed finger is all the reaction I could cause in five hours of driving like a tourist.
Robert Marshall and I have been using his tourist plates in Edinburgh for the first time. And to make the experience as authentic as possible, I tried to drive as if I didn’t know the roads.
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My mishaps included switching lanes (safely) several times, hesitating before moving off at traffic lights, driving slower than locals and coming to a stop at a junction without indicating.
The vast majority of drivers had seemingly endless patience - a far cry from my everyday experience on the streets of Scotland’s capital. So, to test the T-plates further, I took them on a bigger trip to Kingussie, where Robert owns a hotel and where he designed the prototype.
“I created it after driving in Tenerife,” Robert said. “I was completely stressed driving on the opposite side of the road and everybody tailgating me and I just screamed at my partner ‘I wish these people knew that I was a tourist!’
“I work in a hotel and I’ve seen tourists completely stressed, the same fear on their face that I had on my face.”
The aim of the T-plates is similar to P-plates for new drivers: to allow whoever’s behind the wheel more time, space and patience on roads they’re unfamiliar with. My experiences with the vinyl stickers suggest they do exactly that in almost all cases.
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Every tourist I spoke to in Edinburgh thought it was a great idea, and many said they’d felt pressured on Scotland’s roads. Locals, too, are getting behind the plates. “I think it’s a great idea., taxi driver Robert Guthrie told LBC.
“If there’s a car in front with a P on it, you pull back and you know that he’s just passed his test and if you see a tourist you know that they drive on the opposite side of the road so, definitely, you would hold back.”
A security guard who didn’t want his name to be used did have a concern though.
“For the criminals out there it’s a target because they know then, yes it is a tourist car and they’ll be waiting until they go, hanging about.” he said.
“If the tourist never had that sign on there, it could be anyone’s car here.” The same fear was echoed by some of the tourists I spoke with. But Robert believes the concerns are unfounded.
“I’ve already had loads of tourists already out using the plates, they don’t come home with their windows smashed, they don’t come home with their car broken in,” he said.
“I don’t see it being a problem and the product has been designed that you can remove it and reattach it every time you go in and out of your vehicle so you could just peel it off while you’re parked.”
Tourists Art and Sylvia from the Netherlands told LBC they’d been driving for 10 days around Scotland before trying the plates.
“It is a bit stressful when you come here and have some problems, make some mistakes, and you don’t drive as fast as the locals,” Art said.
“They are pushing behind you a lot of the time and they want to pass you. Yesterday, the first day driving with the sticker, I didn’t notice that kind of behaviour so maybe it’s making a difference.”
Why are T-plates needed though? “This is the right time to be doing this,” road safety campaigner Laura Hansler told LBC. “We had the figures in from Transport Scotland that showed this 46% increase in RTCs with tourists across Scotland. So we have to do something.
“We’ve had a couple of catty comments of ‘Well how is that going to prevent a head-on collision’ - we never said it would,” she continued.
“The tourist plate is there to create awareness, it is to allow you time to actually keep yourself away from the tourist as well to giver them a bit more time and space to acclimatise themselves to a car that’s probably a complete mirror image to what they’re used to driving and they’re on the opposite side of the road.”
Figures released by Transport Scotland reveal the number of crashes caused by ‘inexperience of driving on the left’ in 2023 increased by 46% on the year before, from 24 to 35.
LBC understands the DVSA and Department for Transport have no plans to formally recognise T-plates. However, they have confirmed the vinyl cling stickers are legal to display.