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Americans - Pains in the Neck
Message
From
28/09/2005 11:44:52
 
 
To
28/09/2005 11:33:43
Dragan Nedeljkovich (Online)
Now officially retired
Zrenjanin, Serbia
General information
Forum:
Politics
Category:
Other
Miscellaneous
Thread ID:
01052007
Message ID:
01054018
Views:
42
>>Talking of cats, we seem to be the only country in the world to have "cats' eyes" demarking lanes on our roads. A British invention, they're like pairs of wee reflective discs, set in a rubber "bunker", that can squash and rebound as cars drive over them. They reflect your car lights and resemble the landing lights of a runway. Lane dividers - white, kerb markers 0 - red (as in NO), intersection boundaries - green (as in can cross), mediajn/outside lane boundary - amber. I miss them when I'm abroad (not meaning "out of doors") as they so perfectly illuminate your way for you.
>
>Actually any catadiopter (another official name from the OZBS - Basic Law on Traffic Security - that you have to learn when you get a driver's license) is colloquially called "cat's eye", regardless of its location. It can be on a car, bicycle, or sometimes even on the road, though I haven't seen too many of the last kind when I was home. Our roads have very little in terms of signalization, but that's compensated by the number of potholes.

In France you get reflectors on poles, at the sides of the road. Give no idea where the centre of the road is. Doesn't matter if you scrape each other's near side, passing in opposite directions, or hit each other head on, so long as you don't stray off the side of the road.

Driving on the rural highways in Ontario, at night, in the rain can be a nightmare: They have a camber: they're light grey in colour such that the faded central white lines can't be seen under the surface wet; they're full of winter pot-holes; the rain puts an overall sheen over the surface such that you get the visual effect of driving on crumpled cellophane; it's hard to discern where the road ends and the shoulder begins; dazzle from oncoming headlights.

If ever there was a candidate for central line cat's eyes, this is it.
- Whoever said that women are the weaker sex never tried to wrest the bedclothes off one in the middle of the night
- Worry is the interest you pay, in advance, for a loan that you may never need to take out.
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