The beginning of the end?

One of the attractions of Taroudant has always been the lack of traffic control. It always seemed to be that east of Agadir there were no traffic lights or similar. About 5 years ago we got our first one way street and now it is complied with except by cyclists who thik it doesn't apply to them, although Beloved was once made to get off and push by a policeman. Several more one-way streets have followed although we do not yet have the complexity of Liverpool or Birmingham's one-way system.

Imagine our horror when we returned this year and found traffic lights at the Palais Salaam roundabout. A vision of the future.

The lights are quite modern and count down in seconds although they do have stationary little green men. In the north we saw lots which had animated walking little green men which speeded up during the countdown so that in the last few seconds they were running like Usain Bolt.

Traffic controlled roundabouts seem to be on the increase. This is partly because the old french "ceder a droit" roundabouts are being replaced by British - style  "priority to vehicles 

on the roundabout" roundabouts and everyone gets confused. In Agadir they replaced a whole string of traffic lights on one road with roundabouts and then 18months later had to put lights on them. At rush hour the still need a coule of policemen on them to referee.