Having lived inside London for the past year and a half, the M25 is a decent psychological barrier between London and the rest of the country but seeing it as a pretty distinct glowing line was something else.
That's the M6 toll, a road the folks who control such things would like you to pay them money to drive on. Note that it runs beside the perfectly straight 4 lane A5, which predated it, and, simultaneous to the toll road opening had its speed limit reduced to like 30 miles an hour and speed cameras installed every 200 yards along the entire length.
Hard to imagine the whole thing became that much of an accident hot spot right at that moment.
I'm trying to think if there are any iconic roads in Britain, the way that Route 66 is in America. Ireland has the N17 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32-WdYOeJLk). The M1 is pretty famous - it runs up and down the country like a spinal column - but I can't think of any songs. The M25, which goes round London, is known for its traffic jams and gave Orbital their name (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV-hSgL1R74).
As a correction, as this road appears on the BBC's Motorway Cops regularly, and there was an incident featured in this weeks' episode (1): There is always an empty lane, which shifts depending on the time of day. Accidents are apparently very rare, and the speed limit is 50 mph, compared to 70 on a regular motorway and 60 on a 'normal' road.
If I recall the drive correctly that could work quite well in the towards London direction, but there's both a difference in elevation and two lanes merging into one the other way.
Side note, I was thinking of Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett + Neil Gaiman, and it was a roadway, not a building:
> In fact, very few people on the face of the planet know that the very shape of the M25 forms the sigil odegra in the language of the Black Priesthood of Ancient Mu, and means "Hail the Great Beast, Devourer of Worlds." The thousands of motorists who daily fume their way around its serpentine lengths have the same effect as water on a prayer wheel, grinding out an endless fog of low-grade evil to pollute the metaphysical atmosphere for scores of miles around.
A typical single lane road in the UK under national speed limits (60mph) have dashes that look like these - if not opposite (longer lines with shorter gaps)
Based on some other road details, like the barriers, bollards and road signs, I'd say it was modelled fairly realistically on UK roads.
Even 10 feet sounds ridiculously generous by UK standards! Only on motorways would you normally find 12 foot lanes (and even then, they're not always so wide).
I suspect many unfamiliar American drivers would be horrified by UK roads and wouldn't consider them "safe" - yet accidents and road deaths, per mile driven, are significantly lower.
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