Abstract
The effect of Coulomb distortion on the proton analyzing powers in elastic pd scattering is calculated by an effective two-body approximation that involves nd on-shell information only. Varying the nd input information hardly affects the charge symmetric pd predictions. The calculated difference of the neutron and proton analyzing powers is significant at all but the very backward angles. Around the peak value of the analyzing power the difference is mainly due to Coulomb distortion, whereas in forward direction pure Coulomb effects dominate. The agreement with the measured analyzing power difference at 10 MeV is good but only fair 14 MeV, where the experimental situation might not be fully settled.