THE more I drive on High Wycombe’s London Road, the more I think someone dreamed up the design as an April Fool’s joke.

This road is actually the main route in to a very large town. Yet it remains an utter embarrassment as well as a total hindrance to traffic.

No wonder Kingsmead Road became so potholed recently, because every sensible driver used it as a rat run to avoid the agony of the A40. Sadly, I had to use this main road in full again last week when Kingsmead was being repaired, so I had a sharp reminder of its many woes.

The London Road, of course, has large potholes of its own, but it’s the bus lane and lights that take the cake. There’s constant gridlock, and yet as soon as you reach Loudwater going out of town, you realise there’s not actually much traffic after all.

For some reason, the combination of lights makes vehicles crawl at a snail’s pace.

I almost began laughing on Friday when I passed the sign announcing it was now a 30mph zone. I doubt if anyone has ever managed to go that fast.

And while some lights have helped traffic flow, the effect of having so many makes the journey an excruciatingly slow bumper-to-bumper exercise.

But while that may be annoying, the lights system at the Marsh retail park are downright dangerous.

Traffic coming from town must duck into the right and somehow hover in the middle of the road before drivers are able to move in to the retail park. This often blocks everything behind them, causing more tailbacks and more danger.

But the opposite route along the A40 into town is probably worse.

For starters there is the bus lane, possibly the daftest thing ever to be introduced into Bucks, since it forces drivers to weave confusingly in and out of a narrow stretch of road.

Everytime I use the A40 in rush hour, I think I am going to be killed. I am often the only one who adheres to the bus lane rule, meaning I have to cut someone up on the left when it’s time to move back in.

Meanwhile, there are lights everywhere, except the place they are needed – the junction at Chestnut Avenue. This is a hideously difficult turn which results in drivers having to screech across the traffic just to go right.

By the time, you reach the speed camera by The Rye, your nerves are well and truly frazzled, and you’re probably going too fast anyway just because you are no longer used to being able to press the accelerator.

Finally, when you’ve gone through all of this, you are confronted by the insanity of the multitude of town centre mini-roundabouts which give you a migraine just looking at them.

Anyone driving into High Wycombe and seeing any of this would no doubt try to turn back immediately. Only trouble is they couldn’t. They’d only get stuck in traffic.