A little light reading for you:

#COTD

US airbag specifications used to be different from the rest of the world, as they had to be able to absorb the full force of an unrestrained human. Supplementary Restraint System? Not so much.

Unless you’re in the UK, where the inside lane is your outside lane. Or something.

Yup, numbers make more sense for everyone, I hope.

I’ve been on mountain roads in Japan which have a 30km/h limit. That’s about 22mph. In the peak tourist season there may be lots of cars trundling along looking at the scenery, but when there is nobody around it’s possible for a crazy person to easily be travelling at three times the limit. So I’ve heard, anyway.

Interesting. It seems that in addition to having our steering wheels on opposite sides of the car, the US and UK definitions of “inside lane” and “outside lane” are opposite. I’ve changed my explanation in later posts to lanes 1, 2 and 3 to try to minimise confusion (or generate alternative confusion).

Ah, yes. I forgot about the sweet American imported muffin. How foolish of me. We get those too, but don’t differentiate with the name. They’re all just muffins.

There are fewer interchanges on UK arterial highways (motorways) than there are in the US. If lane 1 has cars in it that you are overtaking, you aren’t forced to move over. This rule is more applicable to when there is someone hogging the middle lane for 2, 5, 1o miles or more without passing anyone. That causes…

Pretty sure that’s a muffin, dude. Sometimes people call them English Muffins, but there ain’t another type of muffin anyway.

It doesn’t work in very heavy traffic, and people tend to stick where they are when that happens, but when the traffic is lighter it makes a big difference to traffic flow. Big articulated trucks are limited in the UK to 56mph. Some people drive cars at 60mph, 65mph, 70mph, etc. The legal limit is 70, but it’s normal…

I’m going to star you for your humour. I’m assuming you are joking, right? Most people refer to the 3 lanes of the Motorway as the “slow lane”, the “middle lane” and the “fast lane”. Nobody wants to drive in the “slow lane”. They should be calling them something like the “traffic lane”, the “first overtaking lane” and…

Nope. Inside = Lane 1 (the one where you leave and join the main road)

It only works up to a certain traffic density. When all the lanes are full, the system doesn’t work so well. Our motorways tend to have fewer on and off ramps than in some US cities, although some places like the Coventry Ring Road make for some very interesting merging scenarios (i.e. nightmares).

Just to clarify, the middle lane is an overtaking lane in the UK. The inside lane is for all vehicles to use, and the other 2 or 3 are for overtaking. If everyone follows this rule, the traffic flow is much improved.

Shackleton says hi

#yecannaechangethelawsofphysics

#thatsnothowjetswork

Ah, Miss Goodnight...

I don’t know enough to comment further, Steve. If she’s now the Global Communications Chief, I suppose that an assignment long-term in Japan would be possible.