h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Clearly what's needed is a row of overhead lights and a clearly marked starting grid.

I'm pleased to see that certain British town planners have already started to move in this direction - the first set of lights on the road from the A14 to the Cambridge (UK) Science Park have a staggered front role. This makes for an interesting start - pole position obviously has the advantage of a head start, but 2nd place on the grid gets a better line into the first corner. (Unless you're actually going into the Science park. Some deluded fools think that this is what the lane with pole position on is actually for.)

The next obvious step is to introduce legislation forcing all cars to have engines of about the same performance, to make sure that they all roll away at about the same speed on starting. We may as well take the existing F1 regulations for this, rather than going to the effort of writing new ones.

Ian

Well, we already have an equivalent of the Safety Car - usually a 1983 Montego, driven by a confused septigenarian in a trilby.

You know I think you just solved the enigma of the ever present centre lane owner-occupiers on the M25. As is already well documented in the guide, even at 4am you will, more often than not, find the first car you've seen in 10 minutes sat in the middle lane, despite such social niceties as traffic regulations...

It's now obviously that what's going on is that there's a race being run by the 1 hour club, but they've brought out the safety Volvo for some reason.

(I believe Montegos are reserved for in-town events - they can no longer hack it on the motorways.)