Desire Avenue

After I read a very interesting board on the highway, i'd like to know why a 'hard shoulder' is called like this ?

then french name could be translated as 'emergency stop line' as we are not supposed to use it only in case of emergency.
usually english is good as naming things in an obvious way but this time I don't get it at all...

LINES TO A BEAUTIFUL PETROL PUMP ATTENDANT ON THE MOTORWAY
'I wanted your soft verges
But you gave me the hard shoulder'
(Adrian Henri)

We talk about the 'shoulder' of the road here in UK.And ,er,it's hard.

We are an odd people who like to give things strange names. That is all.

sound world wrote:LINES TO A BEAUTIFUL PETROL PUMP ATTENDANT ON THE MOTORWAY
'I wanted your soft verges
But you gave me the hard shoulder'
(Adrian Henri)

We talk about the 'shoulder' of the road here in UK.And ,er,it's hard.

aka- the erect shoulder

OK, I've asked a few people about this. Nobody knows why the 'shoulder' is called that, but someone pointed out that the phrase 'hard by' used to mean 'right next to', so that could explain the ... er ... 'hard'.

I understood why it's called like this
After some investigation, I found there's also a soft shoulder and then everything connected in my brain

So we have shoulders on motorways because they are at the border of the opposite side of the road as our body shoulder. Then the hard stuff is because on motorway it's made of asphalt, instead of gravel on soft shoulders.

Damn, this one was hard to find but once again it's very logical.

alx5962 wrote: So we have shoulders on motorways

Exactly Alex....I wish you'd remind the cretins on the local radio travel units who constantly make the mistake of saying cars have broken down on the hard shoulder of the A12........which is a dual-carriageway and not a motorway.