People's strange misconceptions (transport, and otherwise)

[kermit]

Flashing your vehicle headlights a couple of times will make the traffic lights change to green.
Rationale is that the traffic signals can somehow detect the flashing lights of blue light services and give them green.

It used to be commonplace for traffic light junctions to feature pneumatic strips 30 or 40 yards ahead of the lights, allowing the lights to be "informed" of the approach of a vehicle. My very law abiding grandfather used to get off his bike and jump up and down on the strips to change the lights, which I think were by default green on the main road, in his favour when approching from the side street.

 

[jfollows]

That a rail season ticket is only valid for direct trains between its two named end points.

I bet there are loads of people who buy tickets for intermediate journeys without realising that their season ticket covers the journey already.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Nov 2024 ==

The concept of a season ticket allowing unlimited travel along one or many routes seems to have missed many people. Not least based on queries raised on this forum.

 

[D6130]

I made my first end-to-end journey on the West Coast Main Line - accompanied by my mother - in September 1966, about a month before my ninth birthday. We travelled South on the Up Royal Scot - which in those days departed Glasgow Central at 10 05 - hauled by D1853 as far as Crewe and then E3117 from there to Euston. Approaching Carstairs, we were somewhat checked and as we trundled slowly along I spotted the small sewage treatment plant on the Up side of the line which is still there to this day and exclaimed "Mum! Is that a mushroom farm?" The young woman sitting opposite us shrieked with laughter....and my mother had to tell me some of the facts of life in private later in the day!

 

[DelW]

... I spotted the small sewage treatment plant on the Up side of the line which is still there to this day and exclaimed "Mum! Is that a mushroom farm?" The young woman sitting opposite us shrieked with laughter....and my mother had to tell me some of the facts of life in private later in the day!

Which very obliquely triggers a memory of mine. Discussing the merits of recycling with a relative, she said that she would never buy recycled toilet paper as "I wouldn't be sure that they'd have cleaned all the poo off it". I had to point out that the manufacturers made it  into toilet paper, not  from toilet paper ...!

 

[Gloster]

Very much an otherwise one. My late mother could not be budged from the belief that Andorra was a hard-line communist state run by Enver Hoxha.

 

[Calthrop]

Very much an otherwise one. My late mother could not be budged from the belief that Andorra was a hard-line communist state run by Enver Hoxha.

Did she think that the hapless country concerned, was in the Pyrenees; or on the Adriatic Sea? Or was she -- like many folk -- oblivious to anything to do with the geography of foreign parts?

 

[dcbwhaley]

Very much an otherwise one. My late mother could not be budged from the belief that Andorra was a hard-line communist state run by Enver Hoxha.

Another otherwise.
In Whaley Bridge where I live there used to be a walkway across the Todbrook reservoir dam with railings to prevent you falling in the water.
After seeing a photo of me leaning on the railings looking at boats on the water my Auntie G went to her grave believing that Whaley was at the seaside

 

[Gloster]

Did she think that the hapless country concerned, was in the Pyrenees; or on the Adriatic Sea? Or was she -- like many folk -- oblivious to anything to do with the geography of foreign parts?

I really don’t know. It was just one of those things that was fixed and you didn’t argue or question.

 

[En]

Flashing your vehicle headlights a couple of times will make the traffic lights change to green.
Rationale is that the traffic signals can somehow detect the flashing lights of blue light services and give them green.

This technically isn't a misapprehension - just misapplication
Torquest market a system called opticom - invented and marketed for a long while by 3M - which uses coded IR emitters to trigger traffic signals for emergency vehicles or where there is tram / bus prioritisation - not aware of UK 999 service use
however some UK emergency services, fire services in particulsr have a system to provide a green wave on certain road 'corridors' out from stations - although at quiet times in a fire appliance or if you try to use the system in a police car , ambulance FRV or a full sized ambulance working from the same station / site you'll often get 'ahead' of the green wave ...