Driving in Scotland

[The Q]

You must have left a very long time ago....
The signs are the ones I learnt, I hate to say 38 years ago and according to wiki the current signs were approved in 1963, They had been modified to bring them into line the European signs and started installation 1964, though of course they were only changed gradually and there have been minor changes since.

[cessna152towser]

The current road signs on the British Isles are more similar to those found elsewhere on the European mainland.
As stated in the previous post, the current signs were introduced quite a long time ago.
According to wiki they were first introduced in 1965, although the conversion was a gradual process.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worboys_Committee
I found one of the old road signs still in use as late as 2009. I photographed it for posterity. Was wishing I had not posted it on the internet though as it disappeared a few weeks later. As it was not immediately replaced by a modern sign I suspect it was illicitly removed by a souvenir hunter who had seen my post.

[OC Richard]

I suspect it was illicitly removed by a souvenir hunter

Wow, bummer!

It reminds me of this oft-stolen sign!

[Mike_Oettle]

I wonder whether there are still signs announcing Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysilio gogogoch (ignobly abbreviated at the railway station as Llanfair PG) that souvenir hunters purloin?
When I looked it up on Wiki I found these two enlightening paragraphs: “The long name cannot be considered an authentic Welsh-language toponym. It was artificially contrived in the 1860s to bestow upon the station the feature of having the longest name of any railway station in Britain, an early example of a publicity stunt. The village’s website credits the name to a cobbler from the nearby village of Menai Bridge. According to Sir John Morris-Jones the name was created by a local tailor, whose name he did not confide, letting the secret die with him. The current postmark shows the name Llanfairpwllgwyngyll . . .
“The village was originally known as Llanfair Pwllgwyngyll (St Mary’s in Hollow of the White Hazel Township). Pwllgwyngyll was the original mediaeval township where the village is today. Old variants (with the Welsh spelling normalized) were Llanfair y Pwllgwyngyll (y = ‘(of) the’) and Llanfair Ymhwll Gwyngyll . . .”

When I was a small boy we still used to see, in remote rural areas, danger signs sponsored by Shell Oil: they had the form of a red triangle (with no white backing) and the yellow scallop shell inscribed SHELL in the angle of the top of the triangle.
Nowadays South African road signs conform to the international standard.

[Mike_Oettle]

Richard, driving in South Africa one also encounters lunatics who overtake on blind rises (as we call them). And quite often there are horrific collisions. But the miracle is that most of these idiots get away with it.
Of course I would be used to driving on the left if I visited Britain, as we do it too, but I have driven a right-hand-drive car without problems.
I have preferred stick shift cars (with proper gearboxes) ever since I drove an automatic about 40 years ago and found that it would not respond to road conditions and shifted with difficulty. No doubt the automatics they build today are more reliable, but I still prefer my stick – a six-on-the-floor (with 5th gear and reverse) rather than the old-fashioned four-on-the-floor.

[Mike_Oettle]

O’Callaghan, your comments on the surviving pre-metric measures still in use in the US and Britain makes me grateful that, unlike the Brits, South Africa went for complete metrication (in theory, anyway).
Our drinks are measured in millilitres, and just about everything else is metric, too. Occasionally I come across illiteracies like kilograms/force (converted from pounds/force when the unit is the newton, not the kg). Fuel consumption is supposed to be calculated in litres per 100km, but kilometres per litre (a holdover from miles to the gallon) are often used. However, these are minor irritations.

[Mike M.]

Having terrified myself driving in the UK, I'd advise getting an automatic transmission. One less thing to worry about while driving on the wrong side of the road from the wrong side of the car. If your personal GPS can be loaded with UK maps, take it.

[OC Richard]

Dangerously offtopic, but I've been to Llanfair PG and saw the big sign.

Here the Community Council's street address, and website address, are Llanfairpwll yet the site has their name Llanfairpwllgwyngyll; evidently both are used locally and are interchangeable.

http://www.llanfairpwll.org/community-council/

Their Football Club uses Llanfair PG on the front of their shirt



and the whole shootin' match on the badge