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

jemmyw•14 minutes 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.

yzydserd•about 1 hour ago

It’s nearby London’s last sewer powered gas lamp.

https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryMagazine/DestinationsUK/F...

1970-01-01•30 minutes ago

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

ifwinterco•3 minutes ago

It would be way more annoying for LHD countries to change to RHD 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 countries have done it since the mid 20th century when roads and cars were a lot simpler and there were fewer of them

timbit42•15 minutes ago

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.

Oarch•34 minutes ago

I watched a Waymo try to take this on last night. It drove on the left.

nateguchi•about 2 hours ago

See 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)

ajb•about 1 hour ago

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 aggregations of mini-roundabouts.

cucumber3732842•42 minutes ago

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 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•9 minutes ago

I 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.

julian_t•about 1 hour ago

My 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.

anotherboffin•about 1 hour ago

Oof that looks brutal

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

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