How Do Countries Choose Which Side They Drive On?

Posted by Miss Cellania in Car & Vehicle on September 11, 2009 at 1:27 pm

This past week, drivers in Samoa had to switch from driving on the right side of the road to driving on the wrong, er, left side. Since the switch was relatively sudden, all the buses now open onto the middle of the street! The Samoans say the switch was to end their dependence on American-made vehicles. Mental_floss takes a look at how other nations decided which side of the road to drive on. Some reasons seems silly in retrospect. Link

 
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A Commute Worse Than Yours

Posted by Queuebot in Odd News on September 3, 2009 at 11:45 am

Two feuding French mayors have taken steps to make their constituent’s commute into Paris extra painful. The mayor of Levallois-Perret made D909 into a one way street to help reduce commuter traffic going through his district.  However, this created more traffic congestion in neighboring Clichy-la-Garenne.

The mayor of Clichy-la-Garenne responded in the obvious neighborly way of also making his district’s portion of the same street one way also -in the opposite direction!

Thousands of commuters travel through the two suburbs each day into Paris, and municipal and national police were called in to redirect traffic away from the gridlock.

Link – via npr

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by OddNumber.

 
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Icy Hill

Posted by Miss Cellania in Car & Vehicle, Video Clips on December 22, 2008 at 12:55 pm


(Live Leak link)

December 15, 2008, South Waterfront neighborhood, Portland, Oregon. Looking from our condo we can see cars attempting, and most failing, to climb up a hill to get out of the neighborhood. I decided to put together a montage of sliding cars. Portland had a recent snowfall and we are expecting more tomorrow.

Might I add kudos for the excellent choice of theme music. -via Bits and Pieces

 
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Microsimulation of Road Traffic

Posted by David in Car & Vehicle on March 27, 2008 at 11:51 am

MicrosimulationThis is a bit old, but I just discovered it this weekend, so it’s new to me: Over at Dresden’s Institute of Technology, they have an applet which performs a microsimulation of road traffic. While this sounds about as fun as sitting in regular traffic, it actually has a “Sims”-type feel to it, meaning that there is a great amount of enjoyment to be had from the process of making all the (simulated) people in these little cars late for dinner, then releasing them from the perils of gridlock.

The idea of traffic engineering has always fascinated me. While this doesn’t explain any of the concepts behind it, I think it shows that there’s a little bit more to traffic than just the chaos and randomness we think there is.

Hit the Link to check it out.

 
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