Intersection is a junction where one street or road crosses another. Synonyms include crossroad, crossway, crossing, carrefour.
Intersections usually come with traffic lights and street signs which specify rules of passage. Although, they don't have to have any of those when two equal, minor streets intersect, because in that case the vehicle at one's right hand side will have the right of way. The lights will also be unnecessary on many of the intersections where one of the roads is minor compared to the other one.
Another thing that most intersections have are zebra crossings or crosswalks, which are used by pedestrians to cross the road without danger of being run over by a moving vehicle. Zebra crossings aren't necessary when there aren't any walkways near the road.
There are also traffic islands, small usually elevated patches of land for the traffic lights and walkways, but they exist only on intersections large enough to actually need them.
A very simple intersection looks like a cross:
| |
---' '---
---. .---
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An intersection of two-way streets looks like this:
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---' | '---
-----+-----
---. | .---
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An intersection of two-way streets with traffic lights and crosswalks looks like this:
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|||||
--==o | o==--
--==--+--==--
--==o | o==--
|||||
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A little more complicated intersection, of larger roads, looks like this:
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|||||||||
--==o--o. . o==--
--==........|==--
--==o.......o==--
--==|........==--
--==o . .o--o==--
|||||||||
| | | | |
The line towards the middle of each of the roads isn't meant to represent a swastika, rather a horizontal pipe some four meters over the ground with another traffic light. There's only so much I can do in ASCII.
Note also that this is how it looks like in countries where you drive on the right side of the road; in countries that drive on the left most of these things are analogous but inversed.
Crossroad intersections are said to be less efficient than roundabouts, yet much more popular (because of tradition and usually smaller size, I suppose).
can you believe nobody has noded this particular meaning yet?