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

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.

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

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.