Design a new highway code, bin the rules that most infuriate you. Invent ones that would smooth journeys, save fuel and lives
Here's a game to pass the time while you inch forward in the petrol queue this weekend. Design a new highway code. Bin the rules that most infuriate you. Invent ones that would smooth journeys, save fuel and even lives. Undertaking, for example. If only it was allowed, it would end all that aggressive tailgating, defuse the frustration of being stuck behind the only driver who thinks 55mph is the appropriate dual carriageway maximum, and keep drivers alert. Boris Johnson wants cyclists to be allowed to turn left through red lights, as French cyclists can when turning right. Plenty of campaigners would like a blanket 30mph limit on rural lanes, or 20mph in urban streets. The fear is always the chaos of changes. But last week, New Zealand – which has the third highest car ownership in the world – abandoned its mystifying give way to the right rule. Although prior surveys suggested that hardly anyone understood what was happening, in the event the most exciting report it provoked was "mild confusion" in Tarankai. But changing the give way rule – so often urged on France, where technically it is still in force – is nothing compared with changing which side of the road you drive on. Back in the 60s, a north European rush to the right occurred almost without incident. In 2009, Samoans, instructed to make the opposite change, feared catastrophe. But the move went without a hitch. Maybe there's a lesson here about shared space and common responsibility that could be applied more widely?