Alphabet Soup: Why Wisconsin’s County Highways Are Lettered, Not Numbered

Why some countries ended up driving on the right, and others on the left, is the subject of much speculation. But it seems that for much of the medieval period there was no hard-and-fast rule: vehicles generally tried to stay in the middle of the road, and their main concern was avoiding hazards such as ditches and potholes. The rules for passing o

Did you know that road signs are designed to signal the level of danger drivers need to be aware of by the number of sides they have? And stop signs, having eight sides, signal the second highest? (The round and thus effectively infinite-sided sign used to mark railroad crossings is the highest level.)

The first electric traffic light was installed in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1914. Like its predecessor from 1868, it used two colors—red and green. But by this time the railway industry had switched the meanings of green and white, so that green meant “go” and white meant “caution.” This was because the increasing use of gas and electric lighting meant t

In the early post-medieval period (i.e. after about 1550), the upkeep of roads was the responsibility of the cities, towns and parishes they passed through. So inevitably they would have carried out repairs and maintenance work on those stretches of road that were most used by local people going about their daily work. But as long-distance travel g