Lay-by
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For the purchasing method see Layaway
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The term lay-by is used in the United Kingdom to describe a roadside parking or rest area for drivers. In the U.S. the usual term is turnout.
Lay-bys can vary in size from a simple parking bay alongside the carriageway sufficient for one car only, to substantial areas that are separated from the carriageway by verges and can accommodate dozens of vehicles.
Lay-bys should be marked by a blue sign with a white letter P on it. There should also be advance warning of lay-bys to give drivers time to slow down safely. In practice, many local authorities neglect to maintain these signs to an adequate degree, and may be missing entirely.
Mobile catering is provided in some larger lay-bys. Such vendors operate from converted caravans, trailers or coaches, and generally offer much better value for money than roadside restaurants. As such these tend to be popular with truckers.
Lay-bys are beneficial to road safety as they provide somewhere safe for drivers to stop, whether they wish simply to rest, check directions, make a phone call, stretch their legs, or take refreshments.
Many roads in the United Kingdom do not have sufficient lay-bys and drivers may have to journey for many miles to find one.
Some lay-bys have been closed off by councils because of problems caused by travellers or vagrants.
Some lay-bys have parking restrictions to prevent lorries using them as overnight parking, or as a long term storage area for trailers.
Some motorways that don't have hard shoulders have a lay-by - despite it being illegal to stop on the carriageway of a motorway.
A new version of a lay-by is coming into place. Emergency Refuge Areas (ERAs) are being used on the M42. At rush hour, its new high-tech signs can open the hard shoulder to traffic, and ERAs then operate as lay-bys. They will have cameras so operators can give an arriving vehicle help (if it's broken down, giving them help on joining the road (as there is no-where to build up speed), etc) and the cameras also detect motorists needlessly stopping. They come with a good amount of space away from the carriageway (when the hard shoulder is not in use) and new emergency phones, that as well as a phone have text messaged replies for the hard of hearing, and 8 different languages.
