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The only road in London where you have to drive on the right
- nateguchi 3mo agoSee also: The Magic Roundabout in Swindon. One of the only? roundabouts in the UK that goes anticlockwise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_(Swindon) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_(Swindon)
- ajb 3mo agoI'm sure you know this, but for the benefit of those who haven't seen it before: it does not go anticlockwise. The"roundabout" in the middle is an illusion generated by the 5 normal roundabouts in a circle. There are no special rules. It has a bad rep, but if you're used to British mini roundabouts, driving on it is a non-event. The regularity actually means it's simpler than other, smaller, but more arbitrary aggregations of mini-roundabouts.
- cucumber3732842 3mo agoSo it accomplishes the baseline performance that just about every major intersection planned out in the last 100yr does of being navigable without serious confusion. If it's so good why aren't there more of them? Not like England has any shortage of N-way (where N >4) intersections they could be used at. The wikipedia page says "the roundabout provides a better throughput of traffic than other designs and has an excellent safety record, since traffic moves too slowly to do serious damage in the event of a collision" which to me sounds a lot like someone trying to spin failure to play up the silver lining.
- ajb 3mo agoI don't know why you expect me to be a partisan for it, given the best thing I said about it was "driving on it is a non-event". Experimentation with junction design has been a good thing in the UK. Many of the designs are, however, attempts to do as well as possible in the space, because a better design would require compulsorily purchasing some people's houses or gardens. So, although there are not lots of magic roundabouts, there are lots of agglomerations of mini-roundabouts with slightly different topology , many of which are more annoying (but fit in the space, and keep traffic flowing). However, it does seem likely that this is kept mainly because of its fame. I seem to recall that there was a proposal to replace it which was shouted down.
- cjs_ac 3mo agoIt was designed by the Road Research Laboratory and has been measured to have better traffic throughput than the conventional roundabout it replaced.
- anotherboffin 3mo agoOof that looks brutal
- julian_t 3mo agoMy first encounter with this was on a foggy November morning, and I had no idea what was going on. There's another very similar but smaller one at Heathrow, next to the Hatton Cross tube station. That one has the added attraction of London taxis and Ubers traversing it at high speed.
- yuumei 3mo agoThe Hemel one is more “complicated” but honestly it’s easy, you just do one roundabout at a time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_(Hemel_Hempstead) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_(Hemel_Hempst...
- yzydserd 3mo agoIt’s nearby London’s last sewer powered gas lamp. https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryMagazine/DestinationsUK/Farting-Lane/ https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryMagazine/DestinationsUK/F...
- Oarch 3mo agoI watched a Waymo try to take this on last night. It drove on the left.
- 1970-01-01 3mo agoLondon will switch sides when America goes metric - i.e. never.
- timbit42 3mo agoOnce all manufacturing is controlled by China, they could refuse to make cars with steering on the right or use Standard measurements, increasing pressure and eventually forcing the UK and US to switch.
- lovich 3mo agoThank you for informing me that China is likely to take over all manufacturing when it comes to cars. I am appalled that there are no US, Japanese, South Korean, Indian, Vietnamese, Russian, or any other nations that manufacture cars. It also sounds completely plausible that a binary choice like left hand or right hand driving can be switched in a way that drives a pressure campaign that nations will give into China on because it’s an easier short term choice and wouldn’t gain an immediate reaction to due to the enormous cost that would be rapidly felt.
- netsharc 3mo agoIn the eastern parts of Russia (well even in "central" Russia like Novosibirsk), there's a lot of imported Japanese cars from their second-hand market. These have the wheels "on the wrong side", but nobody cares, they still drive on the right.
- qingcharles 3mo agoIt's really annoying have the wheel on the wrong side. Makes it really hard to pull out of parking spaces, or overtake. Mail carriers in the USA also have their wheel on the other side so they can reach people's mailboxes easily.
- hunterpayne 3mo agoThe US drives on the right (which is the right) side. So why would the US switch? Its really just Australia, Japan, India and the UK that drive on the left. The other 190ish countries all drive on the right. PS Your 240V electric grid works that way because when the US switched to 120V (in like 1900 or so), we sold all our old gear to you and you never switched. So now all your electric things cost more as a result and your electrical outlets will kill you. So your decision making on such things is suspect.
- jemmyw 3mo ago> There's only one spot in London where you'll have to drive like much of the rest of the world That makes it sound like Britain is the only place with left side traffic. 35% of the world population live in countries where they drive on the left side.
- parthdesai 3mo agoUsing total population is a bad metric considering India itself has about 2 out of 7 billion people.
- Symbiote 3mo agoWhy wouldn't Indian people count?
- riffraff 3mo agoit's arguable the "much of the rest of the world" could refer to number of countries rather than number of people, but I think "much of" applies to both so the author avoided the confusion.
- lstodd 3mo agothey also don't drive on the left, they drive everywhere
- kakacik 3mo ago> Left is right and right is wrong one of cool road signs I saw years ago in Ladakh state on road from Manali to Leh. Funnily enough that 19h minibus trip sometimes went through valleys without any form of road, just used least uneven path. Not so funnily enough we had an obvious technical stop later when driver was banging with huge rock on some part of suspension for an hour, and luckily his caveman engineering worked well enough to get us moving again
- SanjayMehta 3mo ago
- merek 3mo agoI've come across a road like this in Singapore, although with a road barrier https://maps.app.goo.gl/bEEvRkgGQPhfM7198 https://maps.app.goo.gl/bEEvRkgGQPhfM7198
- garciansmith 3mo agoThere are some spots in the US where you drive on the left, albeit for a short distance and the road is divided. Still messes with my brain. E.g., here in the northern suburbs of Detroit (W. Big Beaver going under I-75): https://www.google.com/maps/@42.5620634,-83.1581674,18z https://www.google.com/maps/@42.5620634,-83.1581674,18z
- tmiahm 3mo agoIt's called a Diverging Diamond https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diverging_diamond_interchange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diverging_diamond_interchange
- qingcharles 3mo agoThis is kinda like that point where Hong Kong (RHD) traffic meets mainland China traffic (LHD) IIRC. You have to do a little dance to get everyone on the same plan.
- dreamcompiler 3mo agoThanks. There's one of these in Santa Fe, NM and I didn't know it had a name. I find driving on it odd but it works.
- evanb 3mo agoAlso the whole of the Virgin Islands!
- forinti 3mo agoSometimes, rarely, you find a bit asphalt in Brazil where you have to drive on the left and often it is signalled as "mão inglesa", which is something like "English flow". Recently I discussed with some friends the relative merits of LHT and RHT, and we came to the conclusion that LFT was better because you could drive and shoot with your right hand. So LHT is great for drive-by-shootings. Curiously, no alcohol was ingested during this conversation.
- OJFord 3mo agoBit of a stretch... It's a dead-end private road, also sometimes called a driveway, where the owner has their own rules for how it should be used.
- KaiserPro 3mo agoSo near the savoy is a semi circle road https://www.google.com/maps/search/bush+house/@51.5128306,-0.1186588,733m/ https://www.google.com/maps/search/bush+house/@51.5128306,-0... which feels like a round about and and you are forced to enter it from the wrong way. In fact driving in central london is a unique skill that I unwittingly mastered as I learnt to drive in zone one. This means that I can out manoeuvrer a pissed off white van man in a hurry. Its like chess but more angry and slightly slower.
- petercooper 3mo agoNot a “road” as such, but it’s also quite common in multi storey car parks as well where a ramp is shared by traffic going both up and down to stop unnecessary crossovers at each level.
- qingcharles 3mo agoHere's the road in street view: https://maps.app.goo.gl/7KQLmedYzCjdg5FA7 https://maps.app.goo.gl/7KQLmedYzCjdg5FA7
- dreamcompiler 3mo agoThere's also a part of the US where one must drive on the left: The US Virgin Islands. Driving there is more difficult than "normal" left-side driving (such as in the UK or Japan) because the cars in the USVI are standard US cars with the steering wheel on the left.