Traffic Trivia
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6correct to beat the crowd
This traffic trivia quiz has 49 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 49 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
London: the gas-lit semaphore signal was erected in December 1868 outside the Houses of Parliament near Westminster Bridge, with arms and lamps worked by a police constable.
Q 02What fate befell the 1868 Westminster gas signal only weeks after it was switched on?
It exploded
It exploded: a gas leak blew up the Westminster signal in January 1869, badly injuring the constable operating it, and Britain had no traffic lights again until electric ones arrived in the 1920s.
Q 03In which city did the American Traffic Signal Company install an electric traffic light at Euclid Avenue in August 1914?
Cleveland
Cleveland: the signal at Euclid Avenue and East 105th Street had red and green lamps plus a buzzer, and was wired so conflicting signals could not show at the same time.
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
Japan: the Japanese word for the go light, ao, traditionally covered both blue and green, so a 1973 order specified the bluest permissible shade of green to match the name.
Q 06In which city is police sergeant Harry Jackson credited with erecting the first stop sign?
Detroit
Detroit: Sergeant Harry Jackson of the Detroit police is credited with the first stop sign around 1915, a two-foot square with black letters on a white background, to make drivers halt at a busy intersection.
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, who wrote New York City's first traffic code yet never learned to drive, redesigned Columbus Circle in 1905?
William Phelps Eno
William Phelps Eno favoured small traffic circles, and his one-way Columbus Circle, finished in 1905, was an early example.
Q 09The United Kingdom adopted which roundabout rule nationwide in 1966?
Entering traffic gives way to circulating traffic
Entering traffic gives way to circulating traffic: the 1966 offside-priority rule ended the gridlock in which cars already on the circle were blocked by newcomers pushing in from every arm.
Q 10Swindon's Magic Roundabout, built in 1972, consists of how many mini-roundabouts arranged in a circle?
Five
Five: the 1972 junction, officially County Islands, rings a central island with five mini-roundabouts, following Frank Blackmore's design at 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
Carmel: the Hamilton County city replaced signal after signal with circles from the late 1990s, passing 100 roundabouts by the mid-2010s and styling 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
2 mph: the 1865 Locomotive Act capped self-propelled vehicles at 2 mph in towns and 4 mph in open country, and required a man on foot ahead with a red flag, hence the name Red Flag Act.
Q 13At roughly what speed was Walter Arnold, Britain's first convicted speeder, clocked in 1896?
8 mph
Q 21Route 66, established in 1926, ran from Chicago to which California city?
Santa Monica
Santa Monica was the western end; the road 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
M1: the London to Birmingham motorway opened in November 1959 with no speed limit, crash barriers or lighting, and its Watford Gap services became a haunt of touring bands.
Q 23The world's first parking meter, championed by lawyer and publisher Carl Magee, went into service in July 1935 in which city?
Oklahoma City
Oklahoma City got the first meter, and one of the first tickets went to a preacher who said he had only left to get change.
8 mph: Walter Arnold was timed at about 8 mph in a 2 mph limit at Paddock Wood, Kent, in January 1896, chased down by a constable on a bicycle and fined a shilling.
Q 14Jacob German, arrested in Manhattan in May 1899 for doing 12 mph on Lexington Avenue, worked as what?
Cabbie
Cabbie: Jacob German was driving an electric taxicab for the Electric Vehicle Company when arrested on 20 May 1899, usually cited as America's first speeding arrest; the first paper ticket followed in Dayton in 1904.
Q 15The Emancipation Run of November 1896, celebrating a new 14 mph car limit, took thirty vehicles from London to which seaside town?
Brighton
Brighton was the finish, and the veteran car run is still held on the same London-to-Brighton 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
Sweden: the switch, called Dagen H for Högertrafik, happened at 5 a.m. on 3 September 1967, 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
83 percent: in the 1955 referendum 82.9% of Swedish voters chose to keep driving on the left, yet parliament approved the switch in 1963 because neighbours drove on the right and most Swedish cars were left-hand drive.
Q 18Which Pacific nation switched from right-hand to left-hand traffic in 2009?
Samoa
Samoa: on 7 September 2009 it became the first country in decades to change sides, switching to the left so islanders could 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
Italy: engineer Piero Puricelli's Autostrada dei Laghi from Milan towards Varese and the lakes opened in September 1924 as a tolled road reserved for motor traffic, the first of its kind.
Q 20Which US president, shaped by a punishing 1919 army convoy and the German autobahns, signed the 1956 act creating the Interstate system?
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act in June 1956; a punishing 1919 cross-country army convoy and the 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
Beijing: the August 2010 jam on National Highway 110 into Beijing, clogged with Inner Mongolian coal trucks while roadworks halved capacity, left some drivers 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
I-405: the 15-17 July 2011 closure through the Sepulveda Pass let crews demolish part of the Mulholland Drive bridge; traffic was 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
A transit strike: during New York's April 1980 transit strike, engineer Sam Schwartz's memo titled 'Gridlock Prevention Plan' was picked up by newspapers and the word spread nationwide.
Q 27Percy Shaw, who patented the reflective cat's eye road stud in 1934, came from which Yorkshire town?
Halifax
Halifax: Percy Shaw of Boothtown, Halifax, patented the cat's eye in 1934, inspired by tram rails glinting at night; 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
Slough: the first zebra crossing opened on Slough High Street on 31 October 1951; the name is credited to James Callaghan, then a junior transport minister, who said the stripes looked like a zebra.
Q 29Belisha beacons are named after Leslie Hore-Belisha, who held which post in 1934?
Minister of Transport
Minister of Transport: Leslie Hore-Belisha held the post from 1934 to 1937, and the orange globes on striped poles he introduced in 1934 marked pedestrian crossings decades before crossings had signals of their own.
Q 30Introduced in the UK in 1969, the pelican crossing takes its name from a compression of which phrase?
Pedestrian light controlled
Pedestrian light controlled: the 1969 pelican compressed that phrase, replacing the short-lived 1962 panda crossing, and the 2016 traffic signs regulations dropped it for new installations in favour of the puffin.