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

Why is it that in England you want to put these strange, pointless obstacles called 'roundabouts' wherever you can. Big ones, little ones, sometimes two little ones together.

Why do you do it? Did you get bored with crossroads?

I don't think this kind or weird behavior is exhibited anywhere else in the civilised universe - except where the British have been!

(Your country lanes are real cute, though; and you're allowed to drive fast on your freeways. So it's not all bad, I guess.)

It's to keep trafic moving at junctions, supposedly.
There is a whole article on them at http://www.h2g2.com/A199451

I was told by someone (can't remember when – some pub somewhere) that the British authorities use mini-roundabouts (those little ones that are just a low hump in the road you could drive straight over if you had the courage) because drivers hate them.

The idea being that you drive up to them, get anxious and slow down. Makes sense, but as I said I don't know for sure. I just heard it from a bloke in a pub.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

Hey, I didn't know they were called 'traffic circles'. Gotta love this place!

All depends where you're from I guess.

Mini roundabouts are designed to be driven over, mostly by busses and trucks.

It's almost impossible to go around them sometimes.

And the rules? Ok, we've got 4 roads coming together at one of these real small roundabouts (traffic circles, bumps in raod - whatever). I wanna go straight ahead, and the vehicle coming towards me from the opposite road wanst to turn to his/her right (across my path). So, who's got the right of way.

Sure as hell never seems to be me!

We're not the only ones - there are roundabouts elsewhere in Europe.

The French intially had the opposite priority to us on their roundabouts - people trying to get on to the roundabout had the right of way over those trying to leave, cunningly enabling gridlock to develop even when all the exit roads are clear. However, sanity did eventually prevail.

In the interests of entente cordiale, I should point out that our traffic planners can give the legendary French bureacrats a run for their money when it comes to buggering up traffic schemes. If you want a *seriously* weird roundabout, there is (or at least there was when I did my bike test) one in a town north of London (Aylesbury, I think.)

This traffic nightmare had a large central roundabout, around which traffic flows in *BOTH* directions, and mini-roundabouts at the end of all the approach roads to enable traffic to join the direction of their choice around the central circle.
I think the idea was that you wouldn't have to go all the way round clockwise if you just wanted to take the next exit anticlockwise from your start point, and so it would be faster. However, having to negotiate a mini-roundabout at every point where a road joined hardly aids the flow of traffic.

On the plus side, most drivers seemed so scared they were driving around it at walking pace, so the chance of serious accidents may be lower than one would expect.

Rules : whoever is already on the roundabout has priority

Oh my god, I think I've been on it. The town was called Hemel Hampstead (or something).

It's gotta be the roundabout from hell. I wasn't driving, but I was sure doing a lot of shouting!

And if we get there at the same time?

(Please forgive me, but is your name something to do with holes in
London roads?)

I think there may be a few in different towns in the area.
My theory is that someone in the county traffic department was either :

a) A Frenchman having a huge joke at our expense
b) Receiving backhanders from a construction company
c) On a seriously bad acid trip

Or maybe all three.

Magic roundabouts. I had to go round one on my driving test in Swindon. Thankfully it was only turning left across one junction.

I don't think it's the French or acid, I think it's your English genes.

I always thought that roads should be straight, they cross at right angles, and sometimes they go up or down.

But I believe the English are genetically driven to build randomly curving roads. It's an evolutionary thing, you know. I guess it was your way of confusing all those invaders once you'd rid yourselves of the Romans.

Unless, of course, entrepreneurial map makers saw the potential for a lucrative market in A-Z's.

I like the Roman theory a lot.

I was at school with a boy who was a minister's son, and he went out of his way to break all the rules he could. The Romans built straight roads all over the place. Since then we've had 1500 years of building curvy roads.

I know the Hemel Hempstead roundabout, though I've never had the courage to actually drive round it.

Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;
A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread
The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head

GK Chesterton, The Rolling English Road

I have to say I love the curvy country roads, and that poem is *so* nice.

But in the city it's a different matter. In London you just can't tell which direction you're going in. Recently I hired a car, which I had to return to Park Lane in the centre of London (confusingly called the West End). I knew I'd gone wrong (probably in Finsbury Park) when I found myself at the North Circular Road towards the north-east. I can't tell you how long it took me to get to the right place.

Incidentally, those with ideas of grandeur have filled london with 'square-abouts', much bigger than roundabouts. You can only go one way, and just for fun some 'exits' are no entry!

There's a big one outside the American Embassy, and even before you get there, you have to negotiate Park Lane, which has infamous 'square-abouts' at each end: Hyde Park Corner, and Marble Arch.

Bringing in London roads is a whole new can of worms.

There’s a book called ‘How to be an Alien’ by George Mikes (pronounced Mee-Kesh), a Hungarian who escaped during the uprising in the fifties and made a living making fun of his naturalised country. He has a whole section on London roads. I don’t have the book at hand, but here’s what I remember.

The same road changes its name. If you travel west along Oxford Street, which is quite sensible as it was originally the road to Oxford, it suddenly becomes Bayswater Road.

Different roads having the same name. There are two Lower Richmond Roads near where I live in Putney. The Upper Richmond Road leads to Richmond (after changing its name to Sheen Road and Sheen Road West, naturally) but the Lower Richmond Road just peters out in Barnes and then starts up again about a mile away and a bit to the right. It doesn’t go to Richmond, though, that would be far too easy. If you’re on either of the Lower Richmond Roads and want to actually go to Richmond, the most direct way is to turn left and make for the Upper Richmond Road.

It’s not that we want to confuse foreigners as such. We like to confuse anyone who wasn’t born and brought up in the neighbourhood.

As a Brit, I don’t find those 'square-abouts' too confusing (all right, Hyde Park Corner is crazy, which DNA acknowledged, as I recall, when Trillian claimed the skills she used to avoid the nuclear missiles over Magarathea were learned at Hyde Park Corner). Grosvenor Square, where the US Embassy is, is just a square (surely I’ve seen squares in New York?) though I admit the way they feed the traffic in and out of it is a bit cruel. As I say, we call things like this squares, and your address if you lived there would be ‘16, Grosvenor Square’. But Mikes claims there’s a square in London in which the four sides are given the names of the streets that lead up to them. So the people who live on the square have addresses like ‘147 Green Street’ and ‘45 Danebury Road’. I've never actually seen this, but if I can get hold of a copy of the book I’ll check it out.

The problem with London road names is often due to London really being a collection of various old towns and villages. While a road may look like one road to us, in reality, it's just a collection of roads that happen to be roughly end-to-end, and going in vaguely similar directions.
This should be apparent to anyone who's ever driven much distance round the North Circular. The numerous stimulating traffic lights, where three lanes of revving-up drivers at the end of one road section look to the single lane across the junction that they all have to merge into are a good example of the apparent lack of any central planning.

Rather like the English language, London wasn't designed - it just sort of happened.

Actually, although I complain, I just love the variety and the deep sense of history you get everywhere I've travelled in England...

... except Milton Keynes! Yeah, the roads were straight, but little roundabouts everywhere, and no history whatsoever!

If both of you arrive at the same time:

1. If the other driver at the junction immediately to your right, they have priority.
2. If the other driver is at the junction immediately to your left, you have priority.
3. If you and the other driver are separated by more than one junction, you have to gauge which of you is capable of going quicker. In theory, both of you could go at the same time, regardless of where the other driver wants to go, provided that you can guarantee to be out of the other driver's way before he gets to where you are. (If you see what I mean!)

For more information on this and other British road-related matters, get hold of a copy of The Highway Code (if you're over here, that is). It's available from all good bookshops and some larger newsagents, and only costs about £1.