Getting Around with Stevie Ray Vaughn

I haven’t ventured onto a bicycle yet because I was again, just earlier today, almost hit by a car when I was walking across the street: I looked the wrong way. I am pretty sure pedestrians do not have the right away at small streets or driveways, and certainly not when crossing outside of the zebra crossings.

Streets are narrow; shoulders nonexistent. Cars a plenty; congestion problematic. SUV's here as uncommon as a Fiat 500 at home; Fiat 500's as common here as an SUV at home.

For the most part, street names, if posted, are incorporated into the buildings on the intersections and not consistently on signs. Also, Hill Ave is not the same as Hill Lane, Hill Road, Hill Way, or Hill Street. Ask for directions to Hill Lane, which the magic app on your phone insists is directly under your feet, when you mean Hill Street, and locals seem to not be able to help you close the gap: “Sorry, mate. Never heard of Hill Lane.”  

At least in the older parts of town, house numbers are also not synchronized to the opposite side of the street. So, from an intersection, walking on the left side of the street I was up to 120 Hill Street, but the residence across the street was only number 75 Hill Street. Odds and evens are consistently on their own side of the street, but numbers seem to increase based on the number of structures on their side of the street from the last intersection. I imagine the fire department just knows these things.

Expressways, or carriageways, mostly follow the original roads laid out by the Romans. When travelling by bus, one’s view of the countryside is mostly blocked by hedgerows and trees. There are no billboards or advertisements on the expressways, and exits are free of competing gas stations. Rail lines, especially the high speed ones, are in trenches so a cross wind won't make them unstable.

In town, there are no red light cameras because there are no red lights. Since most intersections are roundabouts there are few to no stop lights anywhere. With this, since there is no intersection, per se, drivers aren’t sitting at intersections and therefore don’t have the time to get distracted by their phones. There is also less pollution from idling cars. Congestion and delays, sure, but seemingly caused by volume and not inattentive drivers.

Stop lights are used, however, to stop vehicle traffic for pedestrians. At these crossings, they use the yellow light between green to red, like we do, but they also include the yellow when going from red to green, as if to say, get ready, because it is going green. Traffic, it seems, gets off more quickly.

So, while there are no red light cameras because there are no red lights, there are speed cameras nearly everywhere on the expressways. Motorists tend to obey the speed limit. Motor cycles can also white line between slowly  moving traffic. Expressways, however, have little to no shoulder, so any accident blocks traffic. Variable speed limits seem to be more common than at home. 

Finally, no matter, the continent or traffic system, as we found out when returing from our last field trip, when stuck in a long queue, a little Stevie Ray Vaughn is “well good.”