1.
United Kingdom
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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom or Britain, is a sovereign country in western Europe. Lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland, the United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland, with an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world and the 11th-largest in Europe. It is also the 21st-most populous country, with an estimated 65.1 million inhabitants, together, this makes it the fourth-most densely populated country in the European Union. The United Kingdom is a monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. The monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 6 February 1952, other major urban areas in the United Kingdom include the regions of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. The United Kingdom consists of four countries—England, Scotland, Wales, the last three have devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in their capitals, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, respectively. The relationships among the countries of the UK have changed over time, Wales was annexed by the Kingdom of England under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. A treaty between England and Scotland resulted in 1707 in a unified Kingdom of Great Britain, which merged in 1801 with the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, there are fourteen British Overseas Territories. These are the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, British influence can be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies. The United Kingdom is a country and has the worlds fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP. The UK is considered to have an economy and is categorised as very high in the Human Development Index. It was the worlds first industrialised country and the worlds foremost power during the 19th, the UK remains a great power with considerable economic, cultural, military, scientific and political influence internationally. It is a nuclear weapons state and its military expenditure ranks fourth or fifth in the world. The UK has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946 and it has been a leading member state of the EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. However, on 23 June 2016, a referendum on the UKs membership of the EU resulted in a decision to leave. The Acts of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have devolved self-government
2.
Animal
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Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia. The animal kingdom emerged as a clade within Apoikozoa as the group to the choanoflagellates. Animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and independently at some point in their lives and their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later in their lives. All animals are heterotrophs, they must ingest other organisms or their products for sustenance, most known animal phyla appeared in the fossil record as marine species during the Cambrian explosion, about 542 million years ago. Animals can be divided broadly into vertebrates and invertebrates, vertebrates have a backbone or spine, and amount to less than five percent of all described animal species. They include fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, the remaining animals are the invertebrates, which lack a backbone. These include molluscs, arthropods, annelids, nematodes, flatworms, cnidarians, ctenophores, the study of animals is called zoology. The word animal comes from the Latin animalis, meaning having breath, the biological definition of the word refers to all members of the kingdom Animalia, encompassing creatures as diverse as sponges, jellyfish, insects, and humans. Aristotle divided the world between animals and plants, and this was followed by Carl Linnaeus, in the first hierarchical classification. In Linnaeuss original scheme, the animals were one of three kingdoms, divided into the classes of Vermes, Insecta, Pisces, Amphibia, Aves, and Mammalia. Since then the last four have all been subsumed into a single phylum, in 1874, Ernst Haeckel divided the animal kingdom into two subkingdoms, Metazoa and Protozoa. The protozoa were later moved to the kingdom Protista, leaving only the metazoa, thus Metazoa is now considered a synonym of Animalia. Animals have several characteristics that set apart from other living things. Animals are eukaryotic and multicellular, which separates them from bacteria and they are heterotrophic, generally digesting food in an internal chamber, which separates them from plants and algae. They are also distinguished from plants, algae, and fungi by lacking cell walls. All animals are motile, if only at life stages. In most animals, embryos pass through a stage, which is a characteristic exclusive to animals. With a few exceptions, most notably the sponges and Placozoa and these include muscles, which are able to contract and control locomotion, and nerve tissues, which send and process signals
3.
Pedestrian
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A pedestrian is a person traveling on foot, whether walking or running. In some communities, those traveling using tiny wheels such as skates, skateboards. In modern times, the term refers to someone walking on a road or pavement. Walking has always been the means of human locomotion. The first humans to migrate from Africa, about 60,000 years ago and they walked along the coast of India to reach Australia. They walked across Asia to reach the Americas, and from Central Asia into Europe, during the 18th and 19th centuries, pedestrianism was a popular spectator sport just as equestrianism still is in places such as Great Britain and the United States. One of the most famous pedestrians of that period was Captain Robert Barclay Allardice, known as The Celebrated Pedestrian and his most impressive feat was to walk 1 mile every hour for 1000 hours, which he achieved between 1 June and 12 July 1809. This feat captured many peoples imagination, and around 10,000 people came to watch over the course of the event. During the rest of the 19th century, many tried to repeat this feat, including Ada Anderson who developed it further. Since the 20th century, interest in walking as a sport has dropped, racewalking is still an Olympic sport, but fails to catch public attention as it did. However major walking feats are still performed, such as the Lands End to John o Groats walk in the United Kingdom, and these feats are often tied to charitable fundraising and are undertaken by celebrities such as Sir Jimmy Savile and Ian Botham as well as by others. Regular walking is important both for health and for the natural environment. Frequent exercise such as walking tends to reduce the chance of obesity, general availability of public transportation encourages walking, as it will not, in most cases, take one directly to ones destination. Roads often have a designated footpath for pedestrian traffic, called the sidewalk in North American English, the pavement in British English, and the footpath in Australian and New Zealand English. There are also not associated with a road, these include urban short cuts and also rural paths used mainly by ramblers, hikers. Footpaths in mountainous or forested areas may also be called trails, pedestrians share some footpaths with horses and bicycles, these paths may be known as bridleways. Other byways used by walkers are also accessible to vehicles, there are also many roads with no footpath. Some modern towns are designed with the network of sidewalks and cycle paths almost entirely separate from the road network, the term trail is also used by the authorities in some countries to mean any footpath that is not attached to a road or street
4.
Cycling
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Cycling, also called bicycling or biking, is the use of bicycles for transport, recreation, exercise or sport. Persons engaged in cycling are referred to as cyclists, bikers, or less commonly, apart from two-wheeled bicycles, cycling also includes the riding of unicycles, tricycles, quadracycles, recumbent and similar human-powered vehicles. Bicycles were introduced in the 19th century and now approximately one billion worldwide. They are the means of transportation in many parts of the world. Cycling is widely regarded as an effective and efficient mode of transportation optimal for short to moderate distances. Cycling also offers a reduced consumption of fuels, less air or noise pollution. These lead to financial cost to the user as well as to society at large. By fitting bicycle racks on the front of buses, transit agencies can significantly increase the areas they can serve, in many countries, the most commonly used vehicle for road transport is a utility bicycle. These have frames with relaxed geometry, protecting the rider from shocks of the road, utility bicycles tend to be equipped with accessories such as mudguards, pannier racks and lights, which extends their usefulness on a daily basis. As the bicycle is so effective as a means of various companies have developed methods of carrying anything from the weekly shop to children on bicycles. Certain countries rely heavily on bicycles and their culture has developed around the bicycle as a form of transport. In Europe, Denmark and the Netherlands have the most bicycles per capita, road bikes tend to have a more upright shape and a shorter wheelbase, which make the bike more mobile but harder to ride slowly. The design, coupled with low or dropped handlebars, requires the rider to bend forward more, making use of stronger muscles, the price of a new bicycle can range from US$50 to more than US$20,000, depending on quality, type and weight. However, UCI regulations stipulate a legal race bike cannot weigh less than 6.8 kg, being measured for a bike and taking it for a test ride are recommended before buying. The drivetrain components of the bike should also be considered, a middle grade dérailleur is sufficient for a beginner, although many utility bikes are equipped with hub gears. If the rider plans a significant amount of hillclimbing a triple-chainrings crankset gear system may be preferred, otherwise, the relatively lighter and less expensive double chainring may be better. Much simpler fixed wheel bikes are also available, many road bikes, along with mountain bikes, include clipless pedals to which special shoes attach, via a cleat, enabling the rider to pull on the pedals as well as push. For basic maintenance and repairs cyclists can carry a pump, a repair kit, a spare inner tube, and tire levers
5.
Motorcycling
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In developing countries, motorcycles are overwhelmingly utilitarian due to lower prices and greater fuel economy. Of all motorcycles, 58% are in the Asia Pacific and Southern and Eastern Asia regions, motorcycles are mainly a luxury good in developed nations, where they are used mostly for recreation, as a lifestyle accessory or a symbol of personal identity. Beyond being a mode of transportation or sport, motorcycling has become a subculture. Although mainly a solo activity, motorcycling can be social and motorcyclists tend to have a sense of community with each other. For most riders, a motorcycle is a cheaper and more convenient form of transportation which causes less commuter congestion within cities and has less impact than automobile ownership. Others ride as a way to stress and to clear their minds as described in Robert M. Pirsigs book Zen. Pirsig contrasted the sense of connection experienced by motorcyclists with the isolation of drivers who are always in a compartment, Pirsig portrayed motorcycling as being in completely in contact with it all. The connection to ones motorcycle is sensed further, as Pirsig explained, Pirsig felt that connection deepen when faced with a difficult mechanical problem that required walking away from it until the solution became clear. Similarly, motorcyclists experience pleasure at the feeling of being far more connected to their motor vehicles than in a motorcar, speed draws many people to motorcycling because the power-to-weight ratio of even a low-power motorcycle is in league with that of an expensive sports car. The power-to-weight ratio of many modestly priced sport bikes is well beyond any mass-market automobile, the fastest accelerating production cars, capable of 0 to 60 mph in under 3. Hunter S. Thompsons book Hells Angels includes an ode to the joys of pushing a motorcycle to its limits, with the throttle screwed on there is only the barest margin, thats when the strange music starts. A sensation he compared to feeling the earth moulding herself under me, and heaving and tossing on each side like a sea. Where permitted, lane splitting, which is known as filtering. In the UK, motorcycles are exempt from the £11.50 per day London congestion charge that other vehicles must pay to enter the city during the day. Motorcycles are also exempt from toll charges at such river crossings as the Severn Bridge, Dartford Crossing, such cities as Bristol provide dedicated free parking and allow motorcycles to use bus lanes. In the United States, motorcycles may use high-occupancy vehicle lanes in accordance with federal law and pay a lesser fee on some toll roads. In New Zealand, motorcycle riders need not pay for parking that is controlled by an arm, the arm occupies less than the entire width of the lane. Many car parks that are controlled so supply special areas for motorcycles to park as to save space
6.
Driving
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Driving is the controlled operation and movement of a motorized vehicle with wheels, such as a car, motorcycle, truck, or bus by either a human or computer controller. The origin of the driver, as recorded from the 15th century, refers to the occupation of driving working animals. The verb to drive in origin means to force to move and it is first recorded of electric railway drivers in 1889 and of a motor-car driver in 1896. Early alternatives were motorneer, motor-man, motor-driver or motorist, french favors conducteur, while German influenced areas adopted Fahrer, and the verbs führen, lenken, steuern —all with a meaning steer, guide, navigate— translating to conduire. Her official reason was that she wanted to visit her mother, but unofficially she intended to generate publicity for her husbands invention, the automobile took off greatly afterwards and the Benzs family business eventually evolved into the present day Mercedes-Benz company. The 7. 6-mile journey took two hours, the descent was accomplished by putting the engine in low gear and doing lots of braking. In certain countries, especially the Scandinavian countries, driving and its equivalent word in the language has become a colloquialism for action in a general sense. For instance, the phrase Lets drive means roughly the same thing as the more common Lets go, Driving in traffic is more than just knowing how to operate the mechanisms which control the vehicle, it requires knowing how to apply the rules of the road. An effective driver also has an understanding of the basics of vehicle handling. Although direct operation of a bicycle and an animal are commonly referred to as riding. Driving over a distance is referred to as a road trip. A driver must have physical skills to be able to control direction, acceleration, another survey indicated that music could adversely affect a drivers concentration. Seizure disorders and Alzheimers disease are among the leading causes of mental impairment among drivers in the United States. Whether or not physicians should be allowed, or even required, to such conditions to state authorities. Driveability of a means the smooth delivery of power, as demanded by the driver. Typical causes of driveability degradation are rough idling, misfiring, surging, hesitation, a driver is subject to the laws of the jurisdiction in which he or she is driving. Most countries also have differing laws against driving while under the influence of alcohol or other drugs, aggressive driving and road rage have become problems for drivers in some areas. Some countries require a vision screening test for individuals to acquire or renew a drivers license, a 2010 systematic review found insufficient evidence to assess the effects of vision screening tests on subsequent motor vehicle crash reduction
7.
Road signs in the United Kingdom
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Road signs used in the United Kingdom conform broadly to European norms, though a number of signs are unique and direction signs omit European route numbers. There is a vast range of signs in use on British roads, from directional sign posts, to signs warning of possible hazards ahead, by the early 1880s all three organisations were erecting their own cast-iron danger boards. The HDs were active in the erection of semi-standardised directional signs, the rise of motoring after 1896 saw the pattern repeated. The larger motoring clubs, notably The Automobile Association and the Royal Scottish Automobile Club erected their own, idiosyncratic warning boards and direction signs on a wide scale. In addition, under the Motor Car Act 1903, four national signs were created, supposed to be set at least 8 ft from the ground and 50 yards from the reference point. These signs were interesting in being based on shape, rather than text or image, a ring, a white diamond, a red disc. In spite of this beginning, this format of sign was to develop into the British road sign that was standard from 1934 until 1964. Before this time, until 1933, when regulations for traffic signs were published under powers created by the Road Traffic Act 1930, national road signage specifications were only advisory. Following a review of national signage in 1921 a limited number of warning and hazard information plates were enhanced by the use of symbols, rather than text only. Such symbols had been developed in continental Europe as early as 1909, but had been dismissed by the UK, the symbols were simple silhouettes, easy to read at a distance. Some were peculiarly British, SCHOOL depicted by the torch of knowledge. These saw the end of the very individual black and yellow vitreous enamel AA signs, while the RSAC had ceased erecting signs, the Royal Automobile Club had begun to do so to RTA specifications and was very active in this respect in the late-1930s. Lettering and symbols were black on a white ground except for orders which were white on blue and it was accompanied by its derestriction a white disc with a diagonal black band bisecting it. Neither of these signs required separate information plates, the 1934 RTA&R also clarified direction and distance signage which also remained in that form until 1964. All signs were mounted on posts painted in black and white stripes, the HALT plate was unique in being T-shaped, orders were mainly landscape and warnings always portrait. Sizes were strictly prescribed, the plate being 21x12 inches with the surmounting triangle 18 inches equal. In preparation for invasion during World War II, all navigational signposts and railway station signs were removed, the national signs were subject to minor modification, mainly in the early post-World War II years. For instance, SCHOOL became a schoolboy and girl marching off a kerb, CHILDREN a boy, a train CROSSING NO GATES was given a more toy-like locomotive
8.
Road surface marking
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Road surface marking is any kind of device or material that is used on a road surface in order to convey official information, they are commonly places with road marking machines. They can also be applied in other facilities used by vehicles to mark parking spaces or designate areas for other uses, Road surface markings are used on paved roadways to provide guidance and information to drivers and pedestrians. Uniformity of the markings is an important factor in minimizing confusion and uncertainty about their meaning, however, countries and areas categorize and specify road surface markings in different ways — white lines are called white lines mechanical, non-mechanical, or temporary. Road surface marking can also indicate regulation for parking and stopping, there is continuous effort to improve the road marking system, and technological breakthroughs include adding retroreflectivity, increasing longevity, and lowering installation cost. Mechanical devices may be raised or recessed into the road surface, most are permanent, some are movable. Cats eye, invented by Percy Shaw in the 1930s, Cats eyes equip many major routes in the British Isles and they consist of four reflective lenses mounted in a durable white rubber housing, two facing fore and two facing aft. The housing is mounted within a cast iron shoe, which the rubber housing sinks in to when driven over and this provides protection from snow ploughing and allows the lenses to be self-cleaning—they pass a rubber blade when depressed. The lenses are available in a variety of different colours, mainly white, yellow/orange, green, red, Botts dots, named for the California Caltrans engineer Elbert Botts, who invented the epoxy that keeps them glued down, are one type of a mechanical non-reflective raised marker. Generally they are used to mark the edges of traffic lanes, Botts dots are also used across a travel lane to draw the drivers attention to the road. They are frequently used in this way to alert drivers to toll booths and they are normally only used in warm climates since snow plows usually remove them along with the snow. Rumble strips are used for the same purpose. A rumble strip can be a series of troughs that is ground out of the asphalt. Other alternatives, similar to the Botts dots, use raised strips, a specific form of raised strips using thermoplastic is called profile thermoplastic markings. The markings are created by fusing thermoplastic to the pavement and create alternating elevation and recession pattern and this can be done as inverted-profile markings or raised-profile markings. Inverted-profile markings are created by pressing a cog rolling over the markings while they are wet to make them corrugated, raised-profile markings are created by extruding extra thickness of thermoplastic at a specific interval to create bumps. Raised-profile markings are known as convex traffic lines. Uses of rumble strips can be across the direction or along the travel direction. Their main way of function is creating a strong vibration when driven over that will alert a driver to various upcoming hazards both by sound and the vibration of the vehicle
9.
Road traffic safety
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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 and this threshold will vary from crash scenario to crash scenario, depending upon the level of protection offered to the road users involved. At the highest level is sustainable prevention of injury and death crashes. At the second level is real time risk reduction, which involves providing users at risk with a specific warning to enable them to take mitigating action. The third level is about reducing the risk which involves applying the road design standards and guidelines, improving driver behavior. Road traffic crashes are one of the world’s largest public health, the problem is all the more acute because the victims are overwhelmingly healthy before their crashes. According to the World Health Organization, more than 1 million people are killed on the world’s roads each year, the report also noted that the problem was most severe in developing countries and that simple prevention measures could halve the number of deaths. The standard measures used in assessing road safety interventions are fatalities and killed or seriously injured rates, countries caught in the old road safety paradigm, replace KSI rates with crash rates — for example, crashes per million vehicle miles. For occupants, Joksch found the probability of death for drivers in multi-vehicle accidents increased as the power of impact speed. Injuries are caused by sudden, severe acceleration, this is difficult to measure, however, crash reconstruction techniques can estimate vehicle speeds before a crash. Therefore, the change in speed is used as a surrogate for acceleration and this enabled the Swedish Road Administration to identify the KSI risk curves using actual crash reconstruction data which led to the human tolerances for serious injury and death referenced above. Interventions are generally easier to identify in the modern road safety paradigm, whose focus is on the human tolerances for serious injury. For example, the elimination of head-on KSI crashes simply required the installation of a median crash barrier. Also, roundabouts, often with speed reducing approaches, encounter very few KSI crashes, the old road safety paradigm of purely crash risk is a far more complex matter. Contributing factors to highway crashes may be related to the driver, interventions may seek to reduce or compensate for these factors, or reduce the severity of crashes. A comprehensive outline of interventions areas can be seen in management systems for road safety, in addition to management systems, which apply predominantly to networks in built-up areas, another class of interventions relates to the design of roadway networks for new districts. Such interventions explore the configurations of a network that will reduce the probability of collisions. Most injuries occur on urban streets but most fatalities on rural roads, for example, in 2013, German autobahns carried 31% of motorized road traffic while accounting for 13% of Germanys traffic deaths
Media related to Highway Code at Wikimedia Commons
The full text of The Highway Code (1931) at Wikisource
