ABSTRACT
To our present day minds a road is a black-topped carriageway for the use of cars and
trucks. However, in order to trace the history of roads we must put this perception aside
and recall the broader definitions in Section 2.1 where a road was defined as ‘The way
devoted to effective travel by motor vehicles, and sometimes by foot and by cycle’.
Indeed, the term way will often be more useful in this short history than will road.
Linguistically the word way derives from moving and travelling and has the same roots as
the words wagon and vehicle.
