Right- and Left-hand Dominance in Navigation

Abstract

This is a survey of a subject for which there are few positive conclusions on the reasons for existing controls and control practices. The position of the operator of a vehicle or craft, the preferred side for the control or conning position and the ‘rules-of-the-road’ for land and water transport and also air transport seemed to have evolved through innate and conditioned human preferences such as ‘handedness’, through customs and traditions and, possibly to a lesser extent, by arbitrary rule making. In general, man is outwardly laterally symmetrical but has a dominant side and a preferred-hand. Within the majority of ethnic groups right-hand preferring people make up 90 per cent of a population. However, despite innate preferences about which there is inconclusive evidence and the influences of a ‘right-handed’ world imposed upon the maturing child, man can acquire through learning and training a sufficient degree of ambidexterity to operate effectively the controls of complex man/machine interfaces. As long as tools, vehicles and all other artifacts remained essentially simple to use or operate they could be controlled, governed or steered by either hand or by one hand—usually the preferred—or by both hands. However, the preferred hand with any of these combinations would ‘lead’ and would provide precision or ‘fine’ control. The introduction of writing and similar tasks requiring coordination of mind, hand and eye has always reinforced the ‘right-handed’ world. For convenience this survey is divided into three major evolutionary paths: sword, steering oar and left-hand circuit.