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I apologize in advance if any of this has been covered elsewhere, but a search didn't turn it up.

I'm just reading Tintin in America for the first time and have noticed a couple of what I would call errors.

First, the taxi at the beginning of the story is right-hand drive. Should be left-hand drive, shouldn't it? Also, the motorcycle with sidecar has the sidecar on the left side - typically in countries where one drives on the right the sidecar is on the right side of the motorcycle. A number of other vehicles (all of them?) also appear to be right hand drive. No, not all, the gangster's car on pg. 12 appears to be left-hand drive, as does the pick-up on pg. 15. Oops, more right-hand drives on pgs. 29 and 54. As far as I know, other than for special purposes such as rural mail-delivery vehicles (so that the driver can reach mailboxes from his seat without driving on the wrong side of the road), right-hand drive vehicles have never been common in north America.

Next, the railroad crossing gates on pg. 30 are of a type that I've never seen in North America.

There may be others, but I'm a gear-head so I notice some of the transportation related errors.

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Update: Posted: 30 Apr 2006 15:36:42
OK, I guess I can answer my own question, at least partly. In the 1900's and 1910's, some US made cars were right-hand drive. A few makers persisted with this into the 20's. And of course imports from the UK would most likely have been uncoverted right hand drive. My own home province, Nova Scotia, as well as some others (NB, PEI, BC), didn't switch to driving on the right until about 1924. Newfoundland didn't do so until they joined Canada. Still, by the late 20s/early 30s, when this story was written, the vast majority of US vehicles were left-hand drive. If I had to guess, and I do at this point, I'd say that right-hand drive vehicles are probably over-represented in Tintin in America's illustrations, but they were probably not terribly uncommon at the time. I wonder if purpose-built taxis might have been right-hand drive so that the driver would be on the same side of the car as passengers he would be picking up? So, it's maybe not as bad as I thought.

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[Edited by Moderator (marsbar) to combine 2 consecutive posts.]

This right-hand and left-hand driving has definitely caused problems and confusion. When they made King Kong in New Zealand they had to watch out for right-hand driving (in New Zealand we drive on the left). The same mistake crops up in the movie adaptation of "James and the Giant Peach"; when the evil aunts jump into their car to escape the rolling peach you can see the car is made for right-hand driving - but this scene is set in England, which is left-hand driving.

Here is another error I have noticed in Tintin in America. When the bank robber switches his boots with Tintin's because his boots leave a distinctive imprint which the police can easily follow, Tintin is forced to put on the robber's boots - then Tintin's boots keep switching back and forth between his own brown boots and the robber's black boots. On page 35, panel 3, the boots are the robber's black boots; page 35, panel 5 the boots still have the distinctive imprint but they are brown. Then the boots remain brown except for page 35, panel 12, when they are the black boots again! After that the black boots disappear for good, and Tintin is back in his brown boots.
Moderator Note: It's an interesting point about the ever-changing footwear, no doubt about it - but it is now forever lost in a post about cars, which is a pity: people may not spot it, or if they do, they run the risk of taking the post off-topic if they respond to it.
It's a good opportunity to promote the idea of keeping threads on topic, and giving new points their own thread if the subject hasn't been discussed before (the forum search is your friend!).
The Tidy Tintinologsit Team