Driving down a remote road, a motorist sees a sign that says: "Watch For Fallen Rocks."
A couple of miles of careful driving later, he spots some pebbles and stops to pick a few up. Arriving in the next town, the motorist carries the stones into the highway maintenance office.
Placing them on the counter, he says to an official: "Here are your fallen rocks. Now where's my watch?"
Road maintenanceIn 1913, under the headline Automobilism: the Wear of Roads and Trackways, the English newspaper, The Times, published an early comment on the expense of the construction and maintenance of roads as traffic became more mechanical and of greater volume. The correspondant pointed out that although a reasonable average width of a main road was 18 feet, the wheels of the vehicles together touched only about 6 inches of the surface. Thus, to save the expense of renewing the surface of the whole 18ft width, he offered the solution that roads be prepared with plateways. These would provide four specially prepared tracks (two in each direction) to take the wear from the wheels. |
