Recently, I was driving back to the South Bay from San Francisco when I got caught in some stop-and-go traffic, which is a common experience in the Bay Area. I was on the 101, a freeway (motorway in the UK), which is at least six lanes in either direction. When I first came to the US, the widest motorway I had ever seen was the M25, which circles London and which, at that time, had only three lanes in each direction: “the slow lane, the overtaking lane, and the fast lane.” God help you if you either went slow in the “fast lane” or fast in the “slow lane.” In fact, God help you if you stayed for too long in the “overtaking lane.” In UK traffic, you’re either in-the-right or in-the-wrong, and the game is to prove that you’re always the former and everyone else is always the latter. “That’s how it works in all countries!” You tell me. Well, in Canada it’s the other way around.
I used to joke that you could get lost while crossing the road in the US because the edge of the endless sea of tarmac (called blacktop in the US) existed somewhere over the horizon. In any case, you probably shouldn’t try crossing the freeway on foot, or on anything else.
Are you now wondering what tarmac is? I was, so I looked it up. Tarmac is short for tarmacadam. Macadam is a type of road construction developed around 1820 by Scottish engineer John London McAdam in which small angular stones are crushed…
