It's partly because they're filled with holes, telephone boxes, grates, craters, broken glass, trees, pedestrians, parked cars, waiting cabs and litter bins; but mostly because they stop and start suddenly, up on high kerbs, so to get off the road and on to them safely I'd have to master some nifty manoeuvre to do with quantum bi-location, atomic wormholes and halting earth time.
"Our models teach you the kerbs of the road, they don't tell you the speed you should be travelling, or where the curves are in the road".
And the kerbs themselves reappear at bus stops, to enable step-free access.Still, it seems to be working.
Road markings and kerbs have mostly gone, and it is no longer entirely clear what is pavement and what is road.The approach, which was pioneered by Hans Monderman in the Netherlands, is supposed to promote safety and ease congestion.
Israel's streets bustle with machinegun-toting 20-year-olds, its kerbs groan beneath armoured cars, and its nervous restaurateurs have you frisked at the steel-barred door.The struggle between the Israelis and the Palestinians has captured the world's imagination like no other.
They are painting the crumbling kerbs with silver paint.State interference does much to hold back Russia's productivity.
Commuters will be forced to drive on already crowded roads or walk to a distant bus or train this in the depths of winter, with pavements icy and kerbs surrounded by lakes of frigid slush.
With parking and navigation assistance, drivers can focus on pedestrians and traffic rather than kerbs and maps.Now, even more advanced driver aids are finding their way from trucks and luxury vehicles into family cars.
The road surface itself is not completely flat: following a legal challenge mounted by Guide Dogs, a charity for the blind, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea was obliged to install ridges where the kerbs used to be.
Check how easy it is to move in a tight space, do a complete about-face, tip backwards to mount kerbs, and change direction abruptly.
The kerbs have all gone, as have the white lines (I don't know which method Kensington and Chelsea council used to erase the lines – hydroblast treatment, scabbling and surface scarification and diamond grinding are all possibilities), and even the roundabout in the middle is unmarked.
