How half a roundabout disappeared

[@steckelton717]

"Really hig really accurate trebuchet" I think thats called an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, Tom.

[@edopronk1303]

As we scientists call it.

[@wilfriedklaebe]

Suborbital Anvil Delivery

[@terezatomcova2793]

ICBT

[@hairyairey]

​@@wilfriedklaebeACME Suborbital Anvil Delivery to a Mr Wile E Coyote

[@hotelmario510]

If it's Scotland it'd be a Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM), 'cause Trident.

[@EdFortune]

They went about that in a roundabout sort of way...

[@darthjuno]

Lmao Ed 😂👏

[@jeremysmith7176]

Tom brought some of his TechDiff energy to this segment. All we are missing is mentioning the spinning wheel that lands on Scotland.

[@YuriyDavygora]

I would like to sincerely apologise to the people of Scotland... AGAIN! Haven't made a Scotland joke, haven't made a Scotland joke, THERE IT IS!!! So the country we're insulting today is Scotland.

[@dseray9494]

Complete with an atomic trebuchet

[@pevio2851]

@@dseray9494 When they mentioned transporting a cannon, that's what I thought of.

[@KusaneHexaku]

oh my god now i want a techdif special on this show, that's be hilarious

[@cheetahman79]

Or France

[@JessicaRainbow]

I saw a wind turbine blade being transported in South Africa. They are massive! You have no idea how big things are until you're standing directly next to one.

[@myladycasagrande863]

They are so huge! I've seen wind turbine blades being transported on interstate highways in the US. They needed whole flocks of pilot cars to get through safely (specially marked vehicles to warn other drivers and help control traffic around the main truck).

[@ecchikitty1395]

Is a wind farm a few miles from where I live, still surreal to go past. They seem fake somehow, despite being right there.

[@tomwantshelp]

Depending on when this was, they might be even bigger than you think. In the last few years, the length of offshore wind turbine blades has more than doubled. The video says 80m, and most currently are about that size (not very long ago they were 40-50m), but the really cutting-edge ones are 120m. These are much bigger than the onshore ones that people will actually see.

[@annando]

Yeah. You can see them a lot when you drive on German highways. Since they are mostly transported at night, you can see them in special parking spots at highway rest stops. These blades are really huge. And these are only the onshore variants. The offshore ones are even bigger.

[@adamsbja]

They were widening a mountain highway between me and my parents, and I got to see some absolutely massive construction equipment. It was neat when the scale kicked in. One night I was driving and they had three lanes of a four-lain highway closed (fortunately open in my direction, it was a family emergency). In the dark I couldn't tell for a while, but suddenly I realized I was driving next to a MASSIVE tread on a flatbed hauler. Just one half of the base of one of these things took most of the road to transport.

[@vaclav_fejt]

Meet Tom Scott, a man who explains things in a very roundabout way.

[@alistairwall5470]

This is possibly my favourite lineup of people you've got on Lateral yet

[@garybarnes4169]

Oh, I did get it at about 05:15, when you said they have to move signs and trees. And it makes sense that only one side of the roundabout needs adjusting, because those things only go one way, from where they're made to where they're installed. Oh, no wait. Tom explained that since they have to close the road anyway, it doesn't matter which way they go round the roundabout. As you were.

[@PianoKwanMan]

The video of the space shuttle being transported just came into mind when reading your comment. It's much smaller than a wind turbine, but very wide

[@CharlesGregory]

I thought the exact same thing! “Oh, obviously they only go one way, from the port to the wind farm location”. When are the blades going the other way?

[@garybarnes4169]

@@CharlesGregory Great minds think alike. Or simple minds seldom differ.Take your pick.

[@chakatfirepaw]

@@CharlesGregory The trucks do need to go both ways, it's not like those are being dumped in the ocean.

[@magnemoe1]

​@@chakatfirepaw They can retract the trailers then they don't carry the blades so back is less of an issue.

[@feyetho9524]

I'm a little addicted to these Lateral videos now

[@Ozymandi_as]

J Draper, Geoff Marshall and Tom Scott, three of my favourite KZbinrs, from very different lanes, converge on a question about roundabouts in Scotland. How ridiculously serendipitous!

[@artbk]

I demand a London Special, with Jenny Draper, Jay Foreman and that Mark guy also from Map Men

[@heidirabenau511]

Mark Cooper Jones?

[@mcb187]

I knew it immediately, but it was kind of funny watching you guys eventually stumble over there. Here in the US, a big concern with roundabouts are large trucks, however they have gotten the design pretty much nailed down for regular 18 wheelers. There are a few places where roundabouts have odd flat spots in them near large manufacturing plants and places where large mining equipment is hauled through.

[@MiddayDolomite]

That was a particularly interesting video because I live near to one of these roundabouts. I always knew that was its use, as there's a manufacturer nearby, but I've never seen it actually in use.

[@J.C...]

And here in the US, I live near a turbine blade manufacturer so I see those trucks all the time. But we are only just starting to use roundabouts here so we don't have any half-rounds lol. I'm also pretty certain their facility is somewhat close to our local interstate so they don't have to navigate through a lot of stuff.

[@AnnekeOosterink]

I used to live close to a manufacturer in the Netherlands, so I have seen them in action on a roundabout that has been flattened for the purpose, plus my husband works for a company that designs and makes the trailers specifically to transport the blades (also other big things, but that's one of them) and he occasionally shows videos where they completely extend the trailer (they extend if there's a load on them) either for testing or to show just how massive it is. The blades are getting longer and longer and the trailers have to be able to carry them, so they get about as long as the blades are.

[@phildman132]

Got this one almost right away, after being stuck behind the incredibly slow and massive wind turbine propellors a lot here in northern Norway, and all the modifications they had to make to the very tight roads here a few years ago when they were building the new wind farm. They brought them in by barge to these tiny little village ports, as they would have to flatten half the buildings in Tromso to drive them from the large port there!

[@lordthor5951]

Same but in Denmark.

[@jaywu1951]

I've got that one immediately. Yay for me! And also for Annie, because I love "green energy windmills" as a new name for wind turbines.

[@mojosbigsticks]

I'm feeling smug - got that straight away.

[@esbech]

Same. The smugness here is palpable. 😂

[@briansimon4363]

Our town is on one of those routes in Mid Wales. They also have built enormous lay-bys with concrete mesh foundations so the transporters can pull over for rest stops and to get the convoys to bunch up if they get separated. The reinforced mesh surface soon gets grown over and hidden so they don’t look like scars on the landscape.

[@cian87]

The whiskey suggestion wasn't entirely off the wall - there was a roundabout on the N52 exit of the M6 in Ireland which had to be temporarily modified to bring the new stills to the new Tullamore Dew distillery. Very much medium sized. And we also have plenty of them being modified for turbine blade transport too - as well as curves being changed on narrower roads

[@threebloodrubies2132]

I listened to this episode last Friday during a 4-hour drive home and when Annie finally landed on windmill turbines, the two separate times that I saw one being hauled suddenly made so much sense. They're truly almost incomprehensibly massive, hauled on a ridiculously long flatbed trailer, and kinda look like something from a Sci fi movie if you don't know what it is. I saw two separate ones being hauled on my commute to work within a week of each other and I was so baffled by it until making this connection

[@dianefields6056]

In South Africa the centre "end" is secured on the horse/cab part, and the end of the blade is securely attached to some wheels. There is nothing under a large portion of the middle of the blade. It really looks weird.

[@swarnamoti]

More episodes with this lineup please

[@lateralcast]

They'll be back in July!

[@nicjansen230]

The first thing that came to my mind was transporting something big. I live near a facility in the Netherlands where they make girders to place over highways and all the roundabouts between it and the highway have a flat centre and removeable signs for the oversized lorries

[@michaelocyoung]

When they built the Vulcan bomber in the 1950s, AVRO paid for all the lampposts on the route from the factory to the airfield at Woodford, Greater Manchester, to be hinged so that the plane could be transported. They were literally like the palm trees in Thunderbirds.

[@bootmii98]

I recently discovered that they were not the same company as the Dutch broadcaster who held a chess tournament once. Disappointed.

[@martinpaulsen1592]

If only there were some way to transport an aircraft other than by road...

[@michaelocyoung]

@@martinpaulsen1592 The plane thing is aircraft factories weren't always built with runways attached. And even today it happens; the A380 wings were made in North Wales then went by barge to Toulouse to be bolted on to the main fuselage body

[@michaelocyoung]

@@martinpaulsen1592 Main fuselage was made at Chadderton, wings were fitted at Woodford, because that's where the runway was.

[@euansmith3699]

That is fantastic 😍 Thanks for sharing.

[@tals.8960]

Fantastic. Reminds me of when they were transporting a decommissioned space shuttle to the California Science Center along LA roads, and had to do various preparations so that such a wide load could fit along the roads...

[@WeepingHoney]

Proudly figured this one out instantly. Great question.

[@offichannelnurnberg5894]

Geoff Marshall and Tom Scott in one video is what KZbin has always needed.

[@JimiLappalainen]

I literally searched for it because I secretly wished they had done it.

[@benmol_]

Near Toulouse, SW France, we have the same "half-grass half-concrete" roundabouts, as this road was used to transport the sections of the A380 to its final assembly line

[@CONCORDE444]

Jenny and Geoff together in a Tom scott video/ series is something i didn't think would happen but so happy to have seen. good to see 3 of my favourite channels colabing for something fun & educational like this. i

[@HelmutNevermore]

I had a stupid idea from the very beginning, but then, up to a certain point in the video, Tom's answers matched it so perfectly that I spent half of the video wondering, "Wait, is this the actual answer? Wait, it can't be! Wait, looks like it is... Is it actually?" My thought, indeed very much based on stereotypes about Scotland, was that in winters roads became icy, and the locals used those slippery roads with big circles on them to play curling.

[@J.C...]

Oh wow. We have a turbine blade manufacturer locally so I see those trucks allllll the time. 👌

[@davidshi451]

Annie has actually had bagpipers at some of her Depths of Wikipedia shows!

[@simonro9168]

1:00 I occasionally see lots of skid marks that appear on some roundabouts around here overnight, so my best guess is that roundabout was part of an illegal race circuit that night

[@WyvernYT]

Late night rally racing is the crime wave that Scotland deserves. :-)

[@Gorion103]

Its not only windmill blades, but all oversized cargo in general. In my country roundabouts are build that way in case something big might be transported that way, and its not because of windmills.

[@davidhansson7041]

Sometimes in Sweden when we ship wide/ long cargo (sometimes even houses or parts of houses) you see a couple of weeks before roadsigns, parts of roundabout, fences all removed or moved or intersections widened to make way for the transport. Then restored a while after.

[@erincarter9457]

I got this one immediately. I live in regional Australia and we used to have a blade come through our town early every morning for a while. They’re huge.

[@DerClouder]

They do this here in finland for roundabouts in mid-sized urban thoroughways to ease lorry-traffic with long trailers. They do this specifically when there is not enough room for a bigger roundabout with a more manageable radius.

[@hebl47]

1:11 Tom in his mind: "I need to check this for a potential video"

[@Lulink013]

Same thing happened in France for the international ITER fusion reactor project.

[@Imurai]

These videos always make me feel smart.

[@OLBastholm]

I haven't finished the video yet, but it has to be because of windmill transport. Part of a roundabout near me was flattened a few months ago for that reason.

[@ColdIceCreamMan]

I was screaming at the monitor for this one. It seemed so obvious. :D

[@nielsdebakker3283]

Oversize loads was the first thing what came to mind, only the quarter dropped really when tom was talking about moving signs.

[@hattix6713]

I got this around two minutes in and it was so frustrating! I love it!

[@VoIcanoman]

Coincidentally, I saw a train yesterday carrying dozens of wind turbine blades here in central Canada. And yes, they were massive...but not 80 metres massive. Maybe 40. So I arrived at the solution about a minute earlier (although I feel that I should've known right away!).

[@RichardBarclay]

The ones in Scotland are possibly off shore ones, which tend to be a lot bigger than on land ones.

[@qwertyTRiG]

My immediate thought was snow ploughs, and I got the real answer about two seconds before they did.

[@thebuzzah]

I gotta say, I've been working my way through the podcast episodes from oldest to newest and I'm presently in the middle of this one! It's neat to see the faces work out the solution.😅

[@Arne_Nym]

Near to where I´m living (Germany) there's also a roundabout that happened to get flattened some while ago for the same reason.

[@MercenaryPen]

I had it in terms of being an issue with the ability of the lorries to turn, but until Tom ruled out military matters, my mind had gone to delivering missiles (probably to the submarine base at Faslane)

[@ajs41]

Is this the first time Geoff Marshall has been on Lateral? I've been a big fan of his for ages.

[@BodyMusicification]

From the beginning I was confused by _"flattening_ roundabouts" because most _good_ roads are already flat. But I guess this is referring to the middle section of roundabouts where vehicles don't actually drive on it?

[@nicktecky55]

The killer is that mini roundabouts are already flat of course. So a bit of a red herring, naughty Tom!

[@MrDannyDetail]

When Tom said "what else is Scotland famous for" I thought of Iron girders, which I suppose wasn't too far off. Then later when he said that they do more of this in Scotland than elsewhere my mind then went to cabers used for tossing at events in Scotland and sometimes elsewhere.

[@bronsdog]

I've driven by a couple of huge trucks carrying wind turbines when driving back to Sydney on the northern highway (M1) late at night, I don't know how they end up navigating sydney as they take up two lanes but it's cool to see

[@Andrewjg_89]

Very good interview. Geoff Marshall looks lot more happier.

[@StarkRG]

I was going to suggest someone find out what kind of trebuchet you'd need to construct to launch the equivalent of an unguided ICBM from Scotland to the US, but I realised almost immediately that SpinLaunch is pretty much attempting to build exactly that. They're trying to get things into orbit, but not into orbit is easier.

[@almerindaromeira8352]

For someone knowing the answer right away it's really frustrating to watch! Still very entertaining.

[@CrystalblueMage]

Being Danish, my first thought was windmills! :D

[@h_v_2835]

There is one roundabout in Birmingham that was flattened halfway in the late 80s to make way for a Formula 3000 race that took place on the city streets

[@olivier2553]

at 2:51, I'd say wind turbines. When Geoff mentioned haulage, I immediately thought about special transport, but it could not be a rocket or a piece of Airbus...

[@tonypang83]

I completely drew a blank for this one... so cryptic 😅

[@garybarnes4169]

There was me thinking that it must be haggis, as we all know that they have legs on one side shorter than the other so that they can walk round mountains.

[@StrangeChickandPuppo]

I had a few hangups on this question.. the description of a 'roundabout' for me has never included a dirt/grass pile in the middle to level off, so the idea of lopping off half of it, to me made it sound like from an overhead shot looking down, the O shape would turn into a D shape of the actual roads, not side view where dirt from the middle would need to be removed on half.. Plus, with the fact that the same empty trailer needing to make its way back, would not lop off the other side on the return trip? One of my Scotland stereotype ideas was about needing to transport a log for a caber toss; all of my stereotypes are pre-modern age, never knew they were loaded with windpower generators..

[@extrastuff9463]

I'm not surprised by this but only because here in the Netherlands I've been sitting in a car as a passenger some years ago observing some giant wind turbine blades being moved over a largeish roundabout. Observing that did make me wonder how those things navigate a smaller turning radius and how difficult it is to plan out routes.

[@neiloflongbeck5705]

Go this was hard to watch. But there again I lived near such roundabouts as a child.

[@JelMain]

The A40 outside Oxford's a case in point. You'll find videos of ultra heavies during the construction of the new Heads of the Valley Roads delivering transformers to Hirwaun in Wales here on YT.

[@GrahamBunneh]

Yay I finally got one! I started with logging, and went through oil pipes, but finally got there

[@misterflibble9799]

Got this one straight away, but then I'm a truck driver that has an interest in this sort of thing. The A34 between Stafford and Stoke-on-Trent has had similar things done to a number of roundabouts in order to accommodate transport of grid-scale transformers built at the now-defunct Alstom factory in Stafford. Presumably they couldn't go up the M6 due to bridge weight limits.

[@aphextwin5712]

In Germany and Switzerland, I’ve seen many half-flat roundabouts which were built like this from the start (roundabouts are a more recent phenomenon here, most being installed probably in the last 20 years). Though this is only on the main roads, not in residential areas. Maybe I had read something about it but as much as I remember, the first time I saw a half-flat roundabout, it was immediately clear to me that this was done so extra-large vehicles can pass through. Given that I had seen a number of videos on windmill blade transports, the reason for the flattening in Scotland was pretty obvious. But it is not just blades for windmills, there are other industrial components, eg, transformers, that require special extra-large vehicles (and thus half-flattened roundabouts).

[@TheVanuPhantom]

I WAS LITERALLY SHOUTING AT MY SCREEN "WINDMILLS, WINDMILLS, IT'S WINDMILLS"

[@rikschaaf]

I was thinking rockets (or rocket parts), since there's now a Scottish space program and it would make sense that only 1 side was needed, because you usually don't have to ship a rocket back to the factory (and even if you did, you could just use the other side of the roundabout, just like with the wind turbine blade).

[@eddiegremlin]

Oh that was agonising 😂 I did like the Whisky one though.

[@jdminette]

Pretty sure I got it at about the 5:05 mark when Tom mentioned logistics....have to see if I'm right...

[@AdzSONLINE]

From the title I was expecting this to be the roundabout in Birmingham that was used for the Superprix

[@SteinGauslaaStrindhaug]

2:34 Windpower maybe! Mini roundabouts are already flat I assume, and large roundabouts are large enough to drive around even with oversized loads, but they needed to flatten at least one side of the medium sized ones to be able to let oversized loads such as wind turbine blades past. But you only need to flatten one side since you will be stopping the traffic anyway... And the blades will mostly go one direction from the factory or port to the wind farms most of the time too.

[@cybergeek11235]

"gyratory" sounds like a place where you'd go to learn how to hula dance

[@bobbyx5373]

There are convoys of these in Shetland, but as far as I know, no roundabouts are harmed.

[@boozytortoise]

Im in scotland. Looking forward to welcoming annie here :)

[@Rollermonkey1]

My first thought was Fire trucks, but then again, I worked as a traffic engineer for a large city in the Department of Transportation for a year long internship.

[@Rollermonkey1]

@5:20 I thought of wind turbine blades.

[@err0x5dd27]

I instantly knew the solution. Probably because it is common here in Germany.

[@10thdoctor15]

Was thinking it could be a low vehicle or a long vehicle, but as soon as I thought about wide loads, I got it.

[@sdspivey]

To me, the question is ill phrased. I was thinking the road was flattened (most roads have a slight pitch for water drainage). As an American, I would not immediately think of the middle as part of the roundabout. The question should have specified the hub or center being flattened. Although I understand the scenarios are always a bit obtuse.

[@kiradotee]

Maybe to help out lorries? Lorries can go easy over mini roundabouts. Also, gigantic/large roundabouts - no issue! But I can see them struggling with medium sized roundabouts unless there's a flat side they can go over.

[@DeGuerre]

When "whisky" was nixed, my brain then went to Buckfast or Irn-Bru.

[@tanelipirinen]

Nailed it!

[@walker1054]

I think I got this one instantly even though I've heard nothing about this before. My answer is energy related, will watch and find out now

[@walker1054]

nailed it instantly ;p

[@teh-maxh]

I knew it was something about HGVs, and I figured out it must be wind turbines when Tom said it was a new Scottish stereotype, but I couldn't figure out why it was only half.

[@NiallMcKenzie]

When Geoff commented about Military, there are roundabouts on the way to Faslane that have access roads through the middle of them for the same reason.

[@stephenlee5929]

Scottish roundabouts, I was certain it would be, an escape route for Haggis, so the don't get splatted like hedgehogs.

[@TheEulerID]

My guess is that it is for the forestry industry. Basically those very long trailers carrying newly felled trees can't get round the roundabouts, and those are generally transported one way. Presumably the trailers can be shortened when empty. Mini roundabouts are not a problem as long vehicles can drive over the centre.

[@chevalier3]

"Hi, my name is Annie, and I just read a picturebook about Scotland."

[@Demonrifts]

I had the interesting experience of having a truck carrying one of these make a turn in my direction at a 4 way stop a few years back. Luckily, it was late night or early morning, so very little traffic, but I had to back up quite a ways to give the driver the room they needed to make the turn. Its impressive just how massive the turbines are.

[@MarylandFarmer.]

My mind immediately went to trucking something but was thinking something small and breakable at first

[@jeffreyshort4531]

I was like, why does Annie's name sound familiar? , and then I read the credits... of course - Depths of Wiki! And Jenny, Geoff, and Tom as well :D

[@Chelm9]

Tom’s last point about them being able to use the same half for travelling the opposite direction seems strange: why would they need to transport the blades away from the destination?

[@Wharrel]

“I’ve never been to Scotland…” “It shows!”

[@hannahk1306]

I got the fact that something couldn't fit round the roundabouts quite early on (mini roundabouts tend to be relatively flat anyway so that larger vehicles can drive over them if needed), but I couldn't work out what and why it was suddenly an issue. Then when Tom said it was a modern Scottish stereotype, my mind went to some sort of mobile deep fried Mars Bar van that couldn't fit round medium-sized roundabouts for some reason 😆

[@q-tuber7034]

“Now it’s time for a guest question. I don’t know the question, and I certainly don’t know the answer, unless I happen to know the answer, which happens about 30% of the time.”

[@ThePongles]

My first thought was was space shuttle movement when removing trees and signs were mentioned.

[@theone-jn4zq]

I so thought she was nailing it when I heard "whi" at the start, but then she said whiskey lol.

[@edwardlees4585]

My first thought was Trident missiles to the Royal Naval base but when he said it wasn't military it had to be turbine components.

[@NashvilleUK]

The roundabouts near Trident bases do however have a cutout through them for the same sort of reason so I think that would also be a correct answer to this question.

[@edwardlees4585]

@@NashvilleUK Thanks. I was up there many years ago and thought I remembered something like that.

[@nathonso_edits]

I love how the she refers to it as a 'green energy windmill'

[@GeneralThargor]

The second lady isn't far wrong, turned up in the highlands one night for a bit of camping, noticed a pub a mile back down the road, went for a beer or two and after half an hour dozens of people turned up made some noise and the car park filled with rally cars. They were having a club race night.

[@easymac79]

5:18 Windmill blades!