</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, Helv, Helvetica, Sans">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, Helv, Helvetica, Sans">Originally posted by EClayton08:
<strong>I believe I read someone posted that the tire has to open opposite of oncomming traffic <img border="0" title="" alt="[Confused]" src="images/icons/confused.gif" /> </strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, Helv, Helvetica, Sans">Yup, that's the reason that I saw posted years ago and I've repeated the same saying. I believed that rumor because when I was getting mine built, I also noticed that every vehicle that I saw that was sold in the U.S. with a stock rear spare tire rack opens with the hinge on the right. I have been unsuccessful in trying to find the actual law or SAE standard that says that, though. I've looked some, but I'd have to look a lot deeper to really know for sure either way.

Interesting that Japanese vehicles continue to follow the U.S. standard in Japan with having the hinge on the right even though they drive on the opposite side of the road.

I agree that it would be smarter to have the left side view obstructed, since that would more likely be the view of traffic going the other direction, not the person you just passed.

Roger Brown has also made the excellent point previously that he intentionally put the hinge on the left side so that he could park on the side of a road and be able to load/unload stuff from the curb.

One minor advantage to having the hinge on the right is that you'll often walk past the latch mechanism on the left as you're walking to/from your truck so you can more easily see if someone tampered with it, etc.

Oh yeah - it's assumed to make the hinge on the same side as the tire, and hopefully you can put the latch low enough that your rack is only part of the width of the bumper.

<small>[ June 19, 2003, 10:19 PM: Message edited by: Jeff the marmot ]</small>