If you're talking about racing games, there's no point to this thread. You follow the racing line, you don't hug one side of the track for the entire way around the course. That's not how you race, you're not going into a game like Gran Turismo for a leisurely drive through the countryside, you're on a racetrack.
If you're talking about traffic on a game like Grand Theft Auto or The Italian Job for the PSOne, it should follow the patterns the locations they're modeling in real life do. So the right hand side if its Vice City set modeled after Miami, or left if its London in The Italian Job.
Huh? You go as fast as you can using every inch of paved real estate you have to use. You're saying you actually tried to race while hugging the right side of the road? lol
No wonder it proved difficult, its wrong and the slowest possible way to race around a track. You realize there isn't on coming traffic on the left side of the track, right?
Watch this lap of Massa around Monza in his F1 Ferrari from a couple of years ago to get a idea of what racing is about. You're not playing a driving simulation, you're playing a racing simulation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcUGC_GoVnc