Quite Interesting

Quite Interesting



A quietly intriguing column.
This week: QI on the road
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There are no roads. Roads are made by walking.
Spanish proverb

Desire lines

"Desire lines" is the name urban planners use to describe the meandering, ribbon-like paths that pedestrians create, despite the best intentions of landscape architects and municipal planners. Photographed from above, they are rarely straight but straggle like streams across open public spaces. Since 1994, people who walk slowly and aimlessly are referred to as meanderthals.


Road or street?

In the Middle Ages, "road" or "way" only meant the direction of travel. The built road was called a street, a Roman word from the same root as "stretch".

Long roads


The longest road in the world is the Pan-American Highway. It stretches 30,000 miles from Alaska to Argentina, except for a 54-mile section of Panamanian rainforest known as the Darién Gap, which is protected because of its biodiversity (or, more likely, the US fear of foot-and-mouth spreading north). The world's largest war memorial is the Great Ocean Road in Australia: the 160-mile thoroughfare along the south-east coast was built by servicemen during the inter-war years to honour fallen comrades.

In 1896 Bridget Driscoll became the first road traffic fatality. The coroner at her inquest hoped 'such a thing would never happen again'

Road signs

William Phelps Eno, an American credited with developing the stop sign, the roundabout, one-way streets, island crossings, bus stops, taxi stands and traffic signal towers never learned to drive. He much preferred to ride horses, thought cars a mere fad and was driven everywhere by a chauffeur. "Roundabout" was coined by another American, Logan Pearsall Smith, who suggested it to the BBC Advisory Committee on Spoken English in 1927. Until then, British roundabouts were called "gyratory circuses".

Road safety

Eno's innovations didn't come in time to save Bridget Driscoll. In 1896, she became the first road traffic fatality when she was struck by a car travelling at 4mph while on her way to a folk-dancing display in Crystal Palace.

Rude roads
The coroner at her inquest hoped "such a thing would never happen again". Now more than a million people die in traffic accidents each year: but you still only run the same risk of being knocked down and killed crossing the road as you do of contracting CJD (Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease): 1 in 365 million. And 38 per cent of UK pedestrians who die on the roads are drunk.


Between the 13th and 16th centuries, London had various streets known as Pissing Lane or Pissing Alley, which were used for the purpose suggested. There was also a Dunghill Lane and Dunghill Stairs. Sherborne Lane has nothing to do with Dorset: it was once Shiteburn Lane. Sadly, the chief street of the London Stews (the medieval red light district) hasn't survived. Grope Lane became Grub Street and is now Milton Street. Similarly named streets in Oxford and Bristol fared no better: they are now called Magpie Lane and Host Street.

Romantic road

Some 2.5 million pulped Mills & Boons novels were mixed into the tarmac of the Midlands Expressway, better known as the new M6 Toll. The construction company that laid the road used 92,000 books per mile for a 16-mile stretch to help the surface absorbency. An engineer said: "They may be slushy to many people, but it's their no-slushiness that's their attraction to us."

Abbey Road

Abbey Road Studios was once an enormous house with nine bedrooms and five reception rooms - number 3 Abbey Road. Bought by EMI, it was christened EMI Studios and became the first purpose-made recording studios in the world. The studios only became known as Abbey Road in 1970 after the eponymous Beatles album.

Abbey Road and St John's Wood Mutual Benefit Building Society was founded in 1874 in a Baptist church in Abbey Road. It became the Abbey National Building Society in 1944.

Liffs of the week

Paston (n): The furtive transfer of a car park ticket to a complete stranger.

High Wycombe (adj): Descriptive of a conservatory with too much cane furniture in it.

Cwmbach (n): Long-awaited return of a Welsh rugby player after injury.

Thanks to M Flowers, M Pennington, R Kay. Email liffs to weekend@telegraph.co.uk.

Intertesting and quite acceptable waste of time. Ha Ha