Cul-de-sac

A cul-de-sac is a street with only one end, which it uses for both arriving and leaving.^[1] The name is French and literally means “bottom of the bag”, which is accurate: anyone who drives into one must turn round and come back out of the bag.

Cul-de-sacs are the only roads designed to take you nowhere, and they are greatly loved for doing exactly that.

The turning circle

At the closed end of a cul-de-sac is a turning circle, a round area provided so that drivers who have realised their mistake can undo it in one go. Drivers who do not manage it in one go perform a three-point turn, then a five-point turn, and then pretend they live there.^[2]

Through traffic

Cul-de-sacs have no through traffic. A 2012 survey placed a person with a clipboard at the end of 300 cul-de-sacs for a full year and recorded a total of zero vehicles passing through, plus one hedgehog, which had used a gap in a fence and was disqualified.^[3]

Recreation

With no through traffic, cul-de-sacs are popular for children’s football, for which the turning circle is also ideally shaped. Goalposts are traditionally marked with jumpers, and disputes over whether the ball went in are left unresolved for several decades.

See also

• Roundabout – a road with no ends at all
• Hedgehog – the only through traffic
• Queue – another line that ends where it started

References

1. Sack, B. (1999). Back the Way You Came. U-Turn Press.
2. Pointe, T. (2004). “Five Points and Counting”. Residential Roads Review 7: 5.
3. Survey Team (2012). Nobody Came Through. Clipboard Editions.