The King’s Edict

King Gurette was sitting on his favorite balcony watching the setting sun to his right when there was a crash and a great deal of shouting on the path below. Two carts had failed to notice the other one at a royal trail crossing. Each driver insisted he had been waved on by the fair maiden standing by the sign post. She was no where to be seen now, but the fisticuffs between drivers was getting out of hand. The king sighed and sent the royal guards down to deal with the civil unrest. Then the thought occurred to him.
He decreed… should two vehicles meet at a crossing, the one on the right would have right of way. If the driver could see a cart on the right, he would have to stop. Right was always his favorite word and besides it was the direction of the setting sun. He called for the royal scribe. So it was set into law.
There was a problem. As the village grew, so did the number of carts on the paths. It wasn’t long before the first crash as the cart nearing an intersection was too busy looking to the right and failed to stop for the one in front of it. After a rash of these mishaps the King called for the royal engineer for advice. He suggested that there be a bridge so that one path would go over the other. The King was of course shocked at the price of doing this. Another option suggested that the path go in a circle at the crossing so that the carts drive along the circle until they arrived at the road they wanted to take and turn off to the right. Everyone else would have to wait until the circle was clear before they moved into it. The King thought this was a great idea. The sun was a circle, the horizon was curved, lots of natural things looked round. He called for his scribe, and again a law was drafted.
As time passed, the city grew, and more carts turned into more cars and people started getting impatient waiting. So now they zipped into the circle any chance they got. There were more crashes. Horses would never have done the stupid things people were now doing. So the King’s descendant called on the city engineer and had the circle made bigger and wider. With a number of lanes going around the circle, cars could now get into the circle, drive around the other cars waiting to turn until they got to the road they wanted.SO the other intersections of the city were done and traffic moved well. But, of course the city kept on growing over the years and still more cars were moving into the circle. Soon, the circle needed to be enlarged again and again, until there were 4 lanes of traffic going around and around at a dizzying pace. It was now impossible to cross the street to the other side, so they had to make a tunnel under the intersection so you could walk through it.
 The city kept on growing and with the advent of flying cars, now several layers of cars were stacked one on the other, following the King,s descendant’s-descendant's rule that the uppermost cars needed to wait until there was an opening in the lower circle until at ground level they could turn out onto the street they wanted.
The cars going around the circle all day and night drew the air along with it into a spiral path until one day, when the conditions were just right, an enormous tornado developed at the circle. Severe winds of 160 miles an hour whipped around in a spiral and sucked all the cars away, carrying them 100 miles out of the city. Finally, you could walk across the street on foot.

This story, of course was inspired by the Rue D’Etoiles in Paris,  the only place outside of a demolition derby where you can see 2 car crashes an hour.