This traffic trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and covers the strange history of getting from A to B: the gas-lit signal outside Parliament that blew up in 1869, the policeman who cut the corners off a plank to make the first stop sign, the Swedish morning when every car crossed to the other side of the road, and the 100 km jam that lasted twelve days. It doubles as a set of driving trivia questions and answers for pub quizzes, road trips and driving-school icebreakers. Expect speed limits, seat belts, breathalysers, zebra and pelican crossings, cat's eyes, traffic cones, the Autobahn, Route 66, the M1 and the world's widest, busiest and deadliest roads, plus a little traffic science on gridlock, green waves and Braess's paradox. Every answer was checked against a reference page before publishing, so you can trust the facts as well as argue about them. Roughly a third of the questions are easy, a third medium and the rest are for people who know who Nils Bohlin was.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Where was the world's first traffic signal, a gas-lit semaphore, erected in December 1868?
London
It stood outside the Houses of Parliament near Westminster Bridge and was operated by a policeman.
Q 02What fate befell the 1868 Westminster gas signal only weeks after it was switched on?
It exploded
A gas leak set it off and badly injured the policeman working it; Britain did without traffic lights again until 1929.
Q 03In which city did the American Traffic Signal Company install an electric traffic light at Euclid Avenue in August 1914?
Cleveland
It had red and green lights and a buzzer, and was wired so that conflicting signals could not show at once.
Q 04Which inventor patented a manually operated three-way traffic signal with moving arms in 1923?
Garrett Morgan
Morgan, also known for an early gas mask, reportedly sold the rights to General Electric.
Q 05Which country decreed in 1973 that the 'go' light should be the bluest possible shade of green?
Japan
The word for the light there was traditionally the same word used for blue, so the tint was changed to match the name.
Q 06In which city did Sergeant Harry Jackson make the first stop sign from plywood in 1914?
Detroit
He was working as a traffic guard at a busy intersection and simply wanted drivers to halt.
Q 07Before 1954, US stop signs carried their lettering on a field of which colour?
Yellow
Fade-resistant red materials did not exist yet, so red only took over once the 1954 manual specified white lettering on a red field.
Q 08Which traffic reformer redesigned New York's Columbus Circle in 1905 as an early one-way traffic circle?
William Phelps Eno
Eno also wrote the first traffic code for New York City and never learned to drive.
Q 09The United Kingdom adopted which roundabout rule nationwide in 1966?
Entering traffic gives way to circulating traffic
Before the change, cars already on the circle could jam solid as newcomers pushed in from every arm.
Q 10Swindon's Magic Roundabout, built in 1972, consists of how many mini-roundabouts arranged in a circle?
Five
Its official name was originally County Islands, and it follows a design by Frank Blackmore of the Transport and Road Research Laboratory.
Q 11In the mid-2010s about 3% of all modern roundabouts in the US were in which suburb north of Indianapolis?
Carmel
The city has replaced signal after signal with circles and calls itself the roundabout capital of the United States.
Q 12Britain's Locomotive Act of 1865 limited self-propelled vehicles to what speed through towns?
2 mph
The same law required a man to walk ahead carrying a red flag, which is why it is remembered as the Red Flag Act.
Q 13At roughly what speed was Walter Arnold, Britain's first convicted speeder, clocked in 1896?
8 mph
He was in a 2 mph zone and was caught by a policeman on a bicycle.
Q 21Route 66, established in 1926, ran from Chicago to which California city?
Santa Monica
It covered 2,448 miles across eight states and was formally removed from the US Highway System in 1985.
Q 22After the 1958 Preston By-pass, which full-length motorway opened in Britain in 1959?
M1
It opened with no speed limit, no crash barriers and no lighting, and became a favourite of touring bands heading for Watford Gap services.
Q 23The world's first installed parking meter went into service on 16 July 1935. Where?
Oklahoma City
Lawyer and publisher Carl Magee pushed for it, and one of the first tickets went to a preacher who said he had only left to get change.
Q 14Jacob German, arrested in Manhattan in May 1899 for doing 12 mph on Lexington Avenue, worked as what?
Cabbie
His is usually cited as the first speeding arrest in the United States; the first paper ticket came in Dayton in 1904.
Q 15The Emancipation Run of November 1896, celebrating a new 14 mph car limit, went from London to which seaside town?
Brighton
Thirty vehicles took part, and the veteran car run is still held on the same route every November.
Q 16Which country moved all its road traffic from the left side to the right at 5 a.m. on 3 September 1967?
Sweden
The change was called Dagen H, for Högertrafik, and only 157 minor accidents were reported that day.
Q 17In the 1955 referendum held before Dagen H, what share of voters wanted to keep driving on the left?
83 percent
Parliament pushed the change through anyway because neighbours drove on the right and most Swedish cars were already left-hand drive.
Q 18Which Pacific nation switched from right-hand to left-hand traffic in 2009?
Samoa
The move let islanders import cheaper used cars from Australia, New Zealand and Japan.
Q 19Which country built the 1924 Autostrada dei Laghi, called the world's first motorway?
Italy
Engineer Piero Puricelli charged tolls from the start to pay for it, and the stretch near Milan has since been widened to five lanes each way.
Q 20Which US president signed the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 that created the Interstate system?
Dwight D. Eisenhower
A punishing 1919 cross-country army convoy and the German autobahns he saw in the war both shaped his thinking.
Q 24The 12-day, 100 km traffic jam of August 2010 was on a coal-truck highway to which Chinese city?
Beijing
Roadworks had halved capacity, and some drivers reported moving only a kilometre a day.
Q 25'Carmageddon' was the nickname for a July 2011 weekend closure of which Los Angeles freeway?
I-405
Crews were demolishing the Mulholland Drive bridge; traffic turned out lighter than feared and cyclists beat a JetBlue flight across town.
Q 26The word 'gridlock' spread from a New York City traffic engineer's memo during which 1980 event?
A transit strike
Sam Schwartz titled his emergency plan the 'Gridlock Prevention Plan' and newspapers picked the word up.
Q 27Percy Shaw, who patented the reflective cat's eye road stud in 1934, came from which Yorkshire town?
Halifax
He was inspired by tram rails glinting at night, and a rubber wiper cleans each reflector whenever a tyre presses it down.
Q 28The world's first zebra crossing was installed in 1951 in which English town?
Slough
The name is credited to future prime minister James Callaghan, who saw the striped design and remarked that it looked like a zebra.
Q 29Belisha beacons are named after Leslie Hore-Belisha, who held which post in 1934?
Minister of Transport
They gave pedestrian crossings a warning signal fifteen years before any crossing got traffic lights of its own.
Q 30Introduced in the UK in 1969, the pelican crossing takes its name from a compression of which phrase?
Pedestrian light controlled
It followed the failed panda crossing, and since October 2016 no new pelicans may be installed as puffins replace them.