The roads are getting narrower and narrower
04/22/2016
Anyone who frequently drives on modern roads is always surprised at how narrow some roads feel. Have roads actually become narrower?
Well, yes, in some cases they have, especially when traffic-hostile governments try to push back the car, as is often the case in cities.
But the majority of roads have not become narrower, but rather wider. But vehicles have grown much faster in recent years. Let's take a road five meters wide, which should allow two cars to cross without any problems. Twenty years ago, each of these cars was around 1.6 meters wide and the wing mirrors were modestly sized, so the two of them easily had 1.4 meters of space to pass.
Today, many cars are 1.8 to 1.9 meters wide, plus (two) mirrors that protrude another 30 centimeters outwards. This means that the two modern cars still have 60 cm of space to cross. This is not enough for many drivers and any side distance detectors fitted will light up red and beep continuously if the other car actually comes within 30 centimetres or so of you.
You realize just how big today's cars are when you sit in a first-generation VW Golf or an Opel Kadett C. But it's not just the sheer width, the cars of the past were also much clearer, had more glass and lower beltlines and so today they look twice as narrow as their wide and walled-up modern descendants.
