Single lane

Single -track is understood to be technical devices that only move in one track . The term is most commonly used for road vehicles and traffic routes .

Single track vehicles

As a single-track vehicles are those whose wheels in only one level - are located - exactly in a row. They primarily include bicycles , motorcycles and some vehicles that can be classified in between, such as mopeds , mopeds or scooters . Technically, but not in everyday language , wheelbarrows , scooters or narrow boats also belong in this class. Also apply motorcycles with sidecars as a single-track motor vehicles because the rear wheels are not connected to an axle.

Driving with single-track road vehicles requires a sufficient sense of balance and must therefore usually be learned or at least practiced for a few minutes. However, there are people who are not or hardly able to do this because of a weakness of their sense of balance . Often this coincides with frequent dizziness .

On the dynamics of single-track land vehicles

In principle, the stability of single-lane driving increases with speed , but with wide tires, even the inexperienced can drive slowly. Brief instability leads to restless driving with short right-left changes of direction, because the inclination of the vehicle causes a steering angle on the respective side. This type of driving, which usually only occurs in the case of inexperienced people or when there is cross wind , is called "Geigeln" in Austria and southern Germany.

Single-lane traffic routes

As a single-lane roads such are designated at the same time only in a direction are passable. These include in particular:

• Single-track railway lines
• single-lane tunnels
• single lane road segments , mainly at construction sites or in one-way streets .

In the case of a road , one speaks of single-lane if two broad vehicles approaching the opposite direction cannot pass each other.

Single-track railway lines are mostly used alternately in both directions, but require special safety equipment for this purpose . The reason for using a railway line with only one lane may be due to the savings or difficulties in the area . The rail connections of factories are usually only single-lane.

In single-lane tunnels , the focus is almost always on saving construction costs; In individual cases it can also be the geological nature of the " mountain range to be penetrated ". Due to some serious accidents and fire disasters in the last decade, there was growing political agreement in Europe to expand the still existing single-lane rail and road tunnels to two lanes with a second tunnel tube .

One lane in the figurative sense

The word "single-track" is used in everyday language and in some technical terminology also in a figurative sense:

• Single-track as a synonym for simple (e.g. single-track thinking as opposed to diverse approaches)
• single-track as a synonym for one-dimensional
• as a special command architecture in EDP