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The only road in London where you have to drive on the right

mylondon.news

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Re: The only road in London where you have to drive on the right

#31

Post by SanjayMehta »

kakacik wrote: post #24
lstodd wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they also don't drive on the left, they drive everywhere

> 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 wor…

The BRO signs: Border Roads Organisation. It's a semi-military organisation.

Re: The only road in London where you have to drive on the right

#32

Post by deadbabe »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #9

London will switch sides when America goes metric - i.e. never.

The imperial system America uses is better optimized for quantities people expect to use in real life frequently without requiring awkward decimals or larger numbers etc. better ergonomics.

metric is only for science.

Re: The only road in London where you have to drive on the right

#33

Post by cjs_ac »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #7
ajb wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'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 aggreg…

So 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 exce…

It was designed by the Road Research Laboratory and has been measured to have better traffic throughput than the conventional roundabout it replaced.

Re: The only road in London where you have to drive on the right

#34

Post by NordStreamYacht »

ifwinterco wrote: post #13
1970-01-01 wrote: post #9

London will switch sides when America goes metric - i.e. never.

It would be way more annoying for LHT countries to change to RHT than to switch from US units to metric, have to change literally every road sign, street light, road markings etc in the entire country. Plus everyone would then be driving cars with the steering wheel on the wrong side for decades until the whole fleet got eventually replaced. Countries have done it before, but I think there's a reason not many countri…

> There's no way to gradually switch from LHT to RHT, you have to somehow do a switchover in a day

You could do it in phases. Have the trucks switch over on Monday, buses on Tuesday ...

Re: The only road in London where you have to drive on the right

#35

Post by zdragnar »

gwbas1c wrote: post #26
1970-01-01 wrote: post #9

London will switch sides when America goes metric - i.e. never.

The US is on the metric system: The official definitions of US customary units are in metric. For example: https://www.regulations.gov/document/NIST-2019-0003-0001 > After December 31, 2022, any data derived from or published as a result of surveying, mapping, or any other activity within the U.S. that is expressed in terms of feet shall only be based on the “foot” equal to 0.3048 meter (exactly), formerly known as t…

The US uses the metric system in some places, but that is not to say it is "on the metric system"- after all, all road speed limit signs are still in miles per hour, as an example. Fuel is priced in dollars per gallon. Consumer goods are almost always sold in measurements of pounds, ounces or gallons. People are measured in feet, inches and pounds on their ID cards and at doctor's offices.

Metric has made almost no inroads at all in anyone's daily life here.

Re: The only road in London where you have to drive on the right

#36

Post by KaiserPro »

So near the savoy is a semi circle road 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.

Re: The only road in London where you have to drive on the right

#37

Post by xnorswap »

hunterpayne wrote: post #29
timbit42 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once 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.

The 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 a…

Would you care to cite the statistics you have showing higher per-capita accidental electric shock deaths? I'm struggling to find any.

Re: The only road in London where you have to drive on the right

#38

Post by NordStreamYacht »

timbit42 wrote: post #10
1970-01-01 wrote: post #9

London will switch sides when America goes metric - i.e. never.

Once 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.

Hong Kong drives on the left, mainland China on the right.

Re: The only road in London where you have to drive on the right

#39

Post by ksec »

ifwinterco wrote: post #13
1970-01-01 wrote: post #9

London will switch sides when America goes metric - i.e. never.

It would be way more annoying for LHT countries to change to RHT than to switch from US units to metric, have to change literally every road sign, street light, road markings etc in the entire country. Plus everyone would then be driving cars with the steering wheel on the wrong side for decades until the whole fleet got eventually replaced. Countries have done it before, but I think there's a reason not many countri…

I used to think about whether we can get more countries switching back to LHT, but with Autonomous Vehicles that will no longer be much of an issue in 10 - 20 years time.
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