Traffic comprises pedestrians, vehicles, ridden or herded animals, trains, and other conveyances that use public ways (roads) for travel and transportation.
A roundabout, also known as a rotary or traffic circle, is a type of circular intersection or junction in which road traffic is permitted to flow in one direction around a central island, and priority is typically given to traffic already in the junction.
An intersection or an at-grade junction is a junction where two or more roads converge, diverge, meet or cross at the same height, as opposed to an interchange, which uses bridges or tunnels to separate different roads. Major intersections are often delineated by gores and may be classified by road segments, traffic controls and lane design.
A pedestrian crossing is a place designated for pedestrians to cross a road, street or avenue. The term "pedestrian crossing" is also used in the Vienna and Geneva Conventions, both of which pertain to road signs and road traffic.
Traffic calming uses physical design and other measures to improve safety for motorists, pedestrians and cyclists. It has become a tool to combat speeding and other unsafe behaviours of drivers in the neighbourhoods. It aims to encourage safer, more responsible driving and potentially reduce traffic flow. Urban planners and traffic engineers have many strategies for traffic calming, including narrowed roads and speed humps. Such measures are common in Australia and Europe, but less so in North America. Traffic calming is a calque of the German word Verkehrsberuhigung – the term's first published use in English was in 1985 by Carmen Hass-Klau.
Road traffic safety refers to the methods and measures used to prevent road users from being killed or seriously injured. Typical road users include pedestrians, cyclists, motorists, vehicle passengers, horse riders, and passengers of on-road public transport.
Switch Island is a major road junction near Aintree in Merseyside, England, in the Metropolitan Borough of Sefton. The junction is at the western terminus of both the M57 and M58 motorways, which converge on the A59 trunk road, the north-south route from Liverpool. The junction is also the terminus of the A5036, a road which serves the Port of Liverpool, and the A5758 which serves as a bypass for the village of Thornton.
In civil engineering, grade separation is a method of aligning a junction of two or more surface transport axes at different heights (grades) so that they will not disrupt the traffic flow on other transit routes when they cross each other. The composition of such transport axes does not have to be uniform; it can consist of a mixture of roads, footpaths, railways, canals, or airport runways. Bridges, tunnels, or a combination of both can be built at a junction to achieve the needed grade separation.
The A4540 is a ring road in Birmingham, England, also known as the Middle Ring Road, or the Middleway. It runs around the centre of the city at a distance of approximately 1 mile (1.6 km). Birmingham City Centre is the area within this ring road. The ring road was planned and designed by Herbert Manzoni. It is now simply known as the Ring Road due to the removal of the old Inner Ring Road.
Road signs in the United Kingdom and in its associated Crown dependencies and overseas territories conform broadly to European design norms, though a number of signs are unique: direction signs omit European route numbers and road signs generally use the Imperial System of units, unlike the rest of Europe. Signs in Wales and parts of Scotland are bilingual.
Shared space is an urban design approach that minimises the segregation between modes of road user. This is done by removing features such as kerbs, road surface markings, traffic signs, and traffic lights. Hans Monderman and others have suggested that, by creating a greater sense of uncertainty and making it unclear who has priority, drivers will reduce their speed, in turn reducing the dominance of vehicles, reducing road casualty rates, and improving safety for other road users.
A junction is where two or more roads meet.
Road signs in Iceland are visual communication devices placed along roads and highways throughout the country to provide information, warnings, and guidance to motorists and pedestrians. Iceland never ratified the Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals, but road signs in Iceland conform to the general pattern of those used in most other European countries, with certain design elements borrowed from Danish and Swedish practice. Signs tend to be more sparsely employed than in other European countries, especially in rural areas.
An all-way stop – also known as a four-way stop – is a traffic management system which requires vehicles on all the approaches to a road intersection to stop at the intersection before proceeding through it. Designed for use at low traffic-volume locations, the arrangement is common in the United States, Canada, Mexico, South Africa, and Liberia, as well as in a number of, usually rural, locations in Australia where visibility on the junction approaches is particularly poor. The stop signs at such intersections may be supplemented with additional plates stating the number of approaches.
Cycling infrastructure is all infrastructure cyclists are allowed to use. Bikeways include bike paths, bike lanes, cycle tracks, rail trails and, where permitted, sidewalks. Roads used by motorists are also cycling infrastructure, except where cyclists are barred such as many freeways/motorways. It includes amenities such as bike racks for parking, shelters, service centers and specialized traffic signs and signals. The more cycling infrastructure, the more people get about by bicycle.
A protected intersection or protected junction, also known as a Dutch-style junction, is a type of at-grade road junction in which cyclists and pedestrians are separated from cars. The primary aim of junction protection is to help pedestrians and cyclists be and feel safer at road junctions.
Terminology related to road transport—the transport of passengers or goods on paved routes between places—is diverse, with variation between dialects of English. There may also be regional differences within a single country, and some terms differ based on the side of the road traffic drives on. This glossary is an alphabetical listing of road transport terms.
Road signs in Lithuania ensure that transport vehicles move safely and orderly, as well as to inform the participants of traffic built-in graphic icons. These icons are governed by the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic and Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals.
A filter in turn is a type of traffic junction found in the Channel Islands. The basic concept is that vehicles are required to take turns to go through the junction. Filter in turn junctions take slightly different forms across the island.
The United Kingdom has specific types of pedestrian crossing.
