I’ve just returned from a two-week trip to far southwest Cornwall, in England, where I was doing research for a new novel. I like to think of it, however, as a driving holiday — not a holiday from driving, mind you, but a holiday of driving. Very fast.

If you live on Vashon, “fast” is anything over 25 mph. You could die of old age just trying to get from one end of the Island to the other. Not so on that other island, England. You can drive from London, in the east, all the way to the west of the country in just over an hour. This is because England, like Vashon, is a small island. It is also because the English drive like maniacs. Very disciplined maniacs (as distinct from, say, Italy). The posted speed on the main east-west interstate (“motorway”) is 70 mph. This appears to be only a suggestion, one about which the police (“Bobbies”) in their squad (“Panda”) cars are most casual.

The motorways have three lanes in each direction and, of course, you drive on the left. I’ve never had any trouble with driving on the left. Perhaps my brain was installed backwards; that would explain other things as well.

Anyway, the far left, or “Loser Lane,” is populated by people driving between 70 and 80 mph. This includes trucks (“lorries”) and people who should not be permitted to drive at all. The middle, or “Loafer Lane,” includes cars traveling at between 80 and 90 mph. They would normally be in the Loser Lane, but in order to pass (“overtake”) the Losers, they must swing out into the middle. But everyone knows the rules, and once you have overtaken you must pull back into the Loser Lane, unless there are even slower losers there already, in which case you can stay in the middle lane, loafing along at 90.

The far right “Lunatic Lane,” is for cars traveling at anywhere between 90 and 120 mph. There is special etiquette here, too: If someone is loafing in the Lunatic Lane, the lunatic flashes his headlights (“headlamps”) and the loafer immediately returns to the middle lane. He knows this is where he rightfully belongs. It’s a class issue. As the lunatic overtakes him, the loafer will lower his eyes and tug at his forelock in the universal gesture of obsequiousness in the UK. The Lunatic Lane could just as easily be called the “Achtung!” lane, as all of the cars (“motors”) there are Teutonic: Mercedes Benzes, BMWs, Audis, and hopped-up Volkswagens like the one I drive here on Vashon. But I was not deterred from participating in the sport: I pretended my modest rented (“hired”) Ford Fiesta was a VW GTI and screamed along in the right lane, like the other lunatics.

Once exiting the motorway, however, you are immediately plunked down in the horse and buggy era. The English countryside is laced with single lane roads bounded by high hedgerows, this latter landscaping feature precluding any hope of seeing what’s ahead. These roads, if we can grace them with that term, are punctuated ever few hundred yards by widened passing places (“lay-bys”). From the air, your average country road in England looks like a python that’s hit the jackpot, with a hedgehog in its long gullet every few feet.

The English treat driving on these single lane roads as if they were created as a government-sanctioned game of chicken. They tear along them, the hedgerows a blur, at breakneck speed and play the game, “Who will pull into the Lay-by first?” Unless you want to be a chump (“a wet”) you rocket along, peering through your windshield (“windscreen”), ready to stomp on the brakes at any given moment. This is, I am convinced, why disc brakes were invented in England long ago by a chap named Fred Lanchester who, no doubt, had way too many head-ons with farm tractors.

It used to be even more fun. Back in the 60s, when I first lived in England, the main arteries (“A-roads”) had three lanes: one in each direction and the middle one for passing in either direction. Essentially, if you wanted to pass you’d pull into the middle lane and wait for the car hurtling toward you in the opposite direction to flinch and pull over.

I should like to propose this as a solution to the backups (“tailbacks”) on Vashon Highway caused by mesmerized tourists, ferry traffic, school buses (“charabancs”), and truck (“lorry”) drivers being paid by the hour (“hour”). A center, two-way, passing (“overtaking”) lane is an efficient and sporty way of moving traffic along. I can’t imagine why, sometime in the last forty years, this system was eliminated in England.

I think raising this proposal is just the ticket for spicing up the next Vashon-Maury Island Community Council meeting.

— Will North is a Vashon novelist whose latest novel involves witches and Bronze Age stone circles in Cornwall, and murder.