The average car is around 6 feet wide, so we only need to make roads 8 feet wide, right?

The Scottish roads baffle me. Even though St Andrews is only about 40 miles away from Edinburgh, it takes an hour and a half to actually drive there. Many country roads are barely wide enough to let one car through. Even the more heavily used roads between towns are only wide enough for one and a half cars. When two cars come across each other on the road, one has to pull off to the grass so that the other can can get through. These roads don't even bother painting a middle white line to indicate the left and right lanes. So much for the 'British drive on the left side of the road' business; that's only if the road is wide enough so that there is a left lane. On one of these roads my mom drove up to a bridge that was only about seven feet wide. Since another car coming across it, Mom drove to the side to let him pass. When my mom turned back onto the bridge to take her turn across it, she hit the bridge and dented up the fender.

Not only are the roads narrow, they are also wind around the open fields instead of going straight. Drivers have to constantly speed up and then suddenly slow down as they come around a tight curve. It's like driving in a grand-prix race. Meanwhile, huge 'lorries' burrow around these curves and almost hit the oncoming traffic. I could understand windy road when streams or hills limit where the roads can go, but often times these roads are over relatively flat territory; there's only a farm field full of cows stopping the road from going straight. I'm not sure if the British government has eminent domain so that they could take the land to make a straight road. I can understand that some of these old roads follow old trails that may have not been straight or wide, but that doesn't mean the British can't pave wider and straighter roads today.

In the United States it's no big deal to drive four or five hours for a weekend trip. I've even driven four hours to visit family one morning and then drove the four hours back home that night. For Europeans, driving three to four hours is a big deal. It's a 'long' trip. Thus, the distances across Scotland, which for Americans are short, can be long for the Scottish. I wonder if the Scottish country roads were wider and straighter, if it would be easier to get from one point in Scotland to the other (for instance, from St Andrews to Edinburgh), then would Scotland feel smaller? There are major roads between the major cities, but these roads are about the same width and straightness as the 'country' roads I see in Mississippi.