Interesting Facts

According to a report from the Department of Transport, the slowest road in England is the A306 Northbound at Richmond, which has a rush hour speed of just 3.5 mph. (We are slowing down: In the year ending to December 2015, average speeds on local ‘A’ roads in England during the weekday morning peak were a measly 23.4 mph. The actual speed limit on a dual carriageway can vary from 40mph and 70mph, but you'll be lucky to get the chance.  One theory is that roads are getting congested by all the online shopping deliveries. Outside of London Nottingham is home to the slowest road: The A6005 Eastbound with rush hour speeds of just 6.4 mph.  This shouldn't come as a surprise to Amatsu.)

According to the World Health Organisation, Spain is the noisiest country in Europe, and Madrid is one of the noisiest capitals. (In fact Spain is the second noisiest country in the world, behind Japan. Most of the noise comes from traffic, such as cars, heavy lorries and noisy motorbikes and mopeds. This is closely followed by building works, discotheques and leisure activities in general; especially in summer. Having been to Valencia during Las Fallas, I'm sure fireworks, which are more like army ordnance, don't help.)

According to a report by traffic information firm Inrix, the average driver in the UK spends 30 hours stuck in traffic jams, every year. (That rises to almost 82 hours in London, which is the second most congested major city in Europe after Brussels. I'm so grateful that I don't have to commute any more, just get up and roll downstairs every morning. There's never a traffic jam, but I sometimes have to fight my way past Laika to turn the computer on.)

 Hamburg, Germany’s second largest city, is planning to ban all cars from its centre over the next 20 years. ( Their new urban development scheme, “Green Network”, will see all vehicles banned in the city centre by 2034. Instead people will move about the port city, either via  public transport, on foot or by bicycle. Gives a whole new meaning to "on your bike".)

Ruthless traffic wardens in Tewksbury have been ticketing cars. (Why ruthless?  Well the motorists had been stranded in recent flooding, and when they returned to their stranded vehicles they found penalty notices stuck to their windscreens. Now you know why your average Brit hates traffic wardens.)

According to figures released by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents; more people were killed on UK roads in 2011 than at any time since 2003. (Statistics revealed almost 2,000 people died in traffic accidents – 3% up on 2010. The number of deaths and serious injuries reported to the police hit 25,023, a 2% increase on the previous year and the first increase in those killed or seriously injured since 1994. Now I wonder what's changed recently that might cause these increases. Anyone here been using their mobile phone recently?) Source

According to ZDNet, 51 per cent of website traffic is through automated software programs, often with      malicious activity in mind. (The breakdown of an average site’s traffic is as follows: - 5% = hacking tools looking for an unpatched or new vulnerability within a site. - 5% = scrapers. - 2% = automated comment spammers. - 19% = “spies” collating competitive intelligence. - 20% = search engines (non-human traffic but benign). - 49% = real people who are actually browsing the Internet. Maybe I should cut my visitor logs in half.) Source

Brazil's Sao Paolo has the dubious honour of having the world's worst daily traffic jams in terms of distance. Brazilian traffic jams may stretch up to 265 kilometers! (On June 10, 2009, they experienced complete gridlock with an accumulated traffic jam of 182 miles (293 km). China holds the record of the world's worst traffic jam, for A 100-kilometer long traffic jam in 2010, which took ten days to disappear, some drivers were stuck for five days. Imagine phoning your boss with that excuse. "Er, I'm stuck in a jam, I'll be about five days late.)

The shire of Northampton has more speed cameras than any other part of the UK. (But don't worry, you can check on the Northampton police web site to see where they are! http://www.northants.police.uk/default.asp?action=article&ID=2123 Is it just me, or is this daft?)

According to the German Government, as of 1st January 2008, over 8 million Germans were registered traffic offenders. (Their response? Well they're going to raise the amount of the fine for traffic offences, in some cases more than double the amount. For example, anyone caught driving through a red light will have to pay €200 instead of the current €50, if the lights were on red for longer than a second. Anyone caught driving under the influence will be slapped with a €3,000 fine. What a great way to raise more money for the German banks!)

According to traffic researcher Frank Schmid, there are 160,000 traffic jams in Germany every year. (This means that 288 million litres of petrol are wasted and 714,000 tons of C02 created. I'm afraid that on my last two holidays I was a contributer, for some reason every time I drive a long way in Germany, someone decides to demolish a bridge on the motorway I'm on.)

Widening the M6 motorway by one lane will cost £1,000 an inch. (This is probably the most expensive tarmac in the world. The whole project is going to cost £2.9bn, twice as much money as Britain gives in aid to Africa in a year. Britain is actually spending £13bn on new roads, just imagine if they invested it in reducing traffic instead.) Listen Here

During 1920, a Detroit policeman named William Potts constructed several red-yellow-green light signal systems. Some lights were mounted atop "traffic towers" manned by policemen; others were overhead suspension lamps remarkably similar in form to a Red Amber Green modern traffic light. (However, the first known signal device for regulating street traffic was installed in 1868 in London, at the intersection of George and Bridge Streets near the Houses of Parliament. Designed by railroad signal engineer JP Knight, it had two semaphore arms which, when extended horizontally, meant "stop"; and when drooped at a 45-degree angle, meant "caution." At night, red and green gas lights accompanied the "stop" and "caution" positions.)

Traffic wardens walk about 15 miles a day. (Ha ha! Serves them right!)

The average person in the UK will spend two weeks over their lifetime waiting for the traffic lights to change. (I think that here in Germany it's probably longer.)