Vocabulary (1)

I've visited America and Canada many times before, and I'm married to someone who is one-third American, one-third Canadian and one-third British (at least in citizenship if not genealogical terms - in fact on reflection I suppose she would say she was fully all three, rather like the Holy Trinity) so I'm quite used by now to the concept of 'British English' and 'American English' being disarmingly different from each other. Despite this, there are still things which catch me out. I knew, of course, that what I would call a 'pavement' in the UK is called a 'sidewalk' here (where such things exist at all, which is rare). But what I didn't know until about a week ago was that 'pavement' refers here to the actual road which you drive on. So when my driving instructor told me to keep the car on the pavement, it was a little disconcerting.