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Newfoundland Roads
We're lucky here on Motoring, we get to travel all over this great country and everywhere we go we meet hundreds of people that just love the show. You never get tired of people who love what you do. I got to say, we never get any better reception than what we do in Newfoundland, and most people are fantastic. I don't know why we make jokes about them because we can learn a lot from them. Not just about how to have a good time or how to welcome people into their homes either. We can learn a thing or two about traffic management.
On the Trans Canada highway between Saint Johns and Gander, which I drove on recently, whenever there are two lanes heading in the same directions and they have to cut one lane back, they cut the left lane. There is a sign painted right on the road: Merge Right. "What's so surprising about that you say? That's obvious: I mean, the driving lane is the right lane, if you need to add a lane, you add it to the left, if you have to cut that lane back you cut it from the left. So why doesn't anybody else in North America do it that way? I don't know! I mean you should be able to get on the right lane of St Johns and drive to Victoria and never have to change lanes. Can you? No! At least not after you leave Newfoundland.
It's even worst in the city of Toronto. The 401 going across the top of the city, the right lane often turns into an off ramp, and then you have no idea where you're going. I don't know if you read the book or say the movie "Bonfire of the Vanities", well that was the basic plan point, the guy goes on the off ramp, gets in the wrong part of town, runs a guy over. Well, it was a terrible book and a worst movie but it's makes a pretty good point: the right lane is sacred; don't let it go away. Now, my question is, how did it get this way? I mean the guys driving the line painting truck don't just paint these lines at random someone is telling them to do it that way. I just want to find out who that person is, why are they telling them to do this? I don't know, maybe some of you has a brother or sister who is a traffic engineer, you know a website I can go to and find this information?
I just don't get it. But I'm glad the Newfoundlanders do.
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