On the road again…

One thing you do alot of in New Jersey is drive. You drive to the shops. You drive 100m from shop to shop. You drive everywhere.

It is not unusual to go for a quick ten minute drive somwhere via a five lane highway (or at least three lane!). The roads are massive and the highways plentiful. It really gives you the feel that you are in a high population density area.

The really unique feature is that you often can’t turn left at traffic lights (remember that you are driving on the right side of the road here). They have these funky jughandles. Below is a picture from Google Maps of a jughandle that we get to go round and round daily 🙂

Other people have commented online that NJ is one big right turn. Apparently the theory is that it saves you money on gas? See here for the NYTimes article on how UPS eliminates left hand turns too.

One thing I do love about driving on NJ roads – is that everytime I’ve seen a broken down car, it has been accompanied by a police car. The police are on the scene to help out and guide traffic in a pronto. I find this comforting when driving in a unknown area. It gives me confidence to adventure on with gusto 🙂

This post was proudly brought to you by our new New Jersey Drivers License – WHOOOOO HOOOOOOO!

(Yes it was difficult doing the online multiple choice test o criteria in feet, miles and BAC levels in ounces)

Actually the one thing that really struck me when reading the NJ automobile hand book while preparing the for license test, was the attitude to driving in NJ. In NJ it is a privilege not a right to have a drivers license. Your NJ license is linked to all sorts of things like insurance, moving violations, parking violations, drug charges, child support payments etc. Thus you must be a good citizen to hold a license. Considering you have to drive everywhere it is quite an incentive!