"Tim Streater" wrote in message
.. .
In article , NY
wrote:


(roundabouts)
are infinitely better than American four-way-stop junctions which make
everyone stop even if you can see that there is no traffic coming from any
other direction that you would need to give way to.

+1 to that, having suffered from them for 12 years. They have lousy
throughput. And what's more, you'd better stop, otherwise a praying
mantis aka cop car will appear from nowhere and give chase.

And they put stop signs in dopey places, too. Like, you're driving
along, and suddenly there's a stop sign. No roads off in any direction,
just the klod living at that spot got fed up with people barrelling
through.

They also measure distances in strange units: temporary roadworks often have
signs giving the distance to the speed restriction or single-alternate-line
working... measured in feet, rather than yards or fractions of a mile. A
sign saying "Roadworks in 1300 feet" means a lot less that "Roadworks in 500
yards" or "Roadworks in 1/4 mile" (I've rounded the numbers). Maybe it's
because I always think in the largest unit that expresses the quantity
without losing too much precision - hence human weights in stones, not
pounds, and road distances in yards or miles rather than feet. The largest
distance that I saw expressed in feet on a sign was (I think) 10,500 feet
which is two miles :-)

The most incomprehensible sign that I say said

PED
XING

Uh? Then I realised that it was for a pedestrian crossing :-)