Motorways part 4 - (Jubilee special) the crown jewels of the motorway

You have probably noticed the cats eyes (or road studs) embedded in the road between the centre white lines, and how they light up when caught by headlights. These studs are there to guide your way in sub light conditions such as heavy rain or fog but in multi-lane environments such as motorways, studs have different duties. Just because this is a jubilee weekend lets think of these studs as the queens foot soldiers. It is convenient then that HRM has five different regiments of foot guards and there are five different stud colours in use on UK motorways. Each colour of stud has its own position on the motorway so that should you find yourself in heavy fog, for instance, and you lose track of your position on the motorway then you can use the colour coding of these studs to reorient yourself and establish your position(Assuming that you can remember the position of each colour) You must hand it to the DFT for this level of consideration in keeping you safe.

So then, we are currently in lane one on the motorway but it's daylight so the studs are less visible, hang on a mo while I usher in a fog bank and some black clouds (you can do that when you’re a writer you know) Ok that’s more like it, now we can switch on the lights and see the coloured studs reflecting back at us. On our left you can now see(1) Red studs lining the hard shoulder. In keeping with our theme of the five regiments of foot soldiers let’s consider these red studs to be the Welch guards (given the red dragon of the Welch flag). When any exit or entry slip road joins the motorway there is a temporary changing of the guard as the Red, Welch guard, studs turn to (2) Green studs which I will assign as the Irish guards for their green flag. This change from red to green studs occurs only for the length of merging between the slip road and the motorway. I am having a bit of fun with the regiment theme here but just to be clear, it is not intended as a memory technique so it might help you here to relate these two colours to traffic lights, when the lights/studs are green you can exit/enter the motorway, when the lights/studs are red you will find only hard shoulder and no exit point.

On our right the stud colour turns (3) white/clear, lets assign these studs to the Coldstream guards. The purpose and position of these white studs is to be the lane diveders in-between the three lanes. On the far right of the motorway where lane three meets the central reservation are the (4) Amber studs which I will assign to the Scots guards for no better reason than the Scots are famed for the production of amber liquid whisky. (Well let’s face it, their flag was not coming to my rescue on this one) There is one more stud colour, or combination, that comes into play on a motorway and you can expect to see it at road works. These studs are a combination of (5) Red and Amber. Remember the traffic light sequence where Red turned to Red/Amber before turning to Green? This is an intermediate colour between stop and go which is perhaps most fitting for use at road works as they are instructing you to be vigilant and prepared. By a process of elimination we have only one regiment left so we will assign the roadwork studs to the Grenadier guards.

And there you have, laid out before you, the crown jewels of the motorway. You may well be still wondering how you will remember the positioning for each of these five differently coloured studs, and in the spirit of The Demon Road: A Theory Test Novel I have devised a very simple yet incredibly effective memory technique for just this purpose, I highly recommend you purchase your copy from www.facebook.com/TheoryTestNovel to find out what it is, you won't be disappointed. http://twitter.com/theorytestnovel