Tarmaceater:
Nearly every village, town and city in France has a bypass or ring road , some of us may remember the ADR lorries who refused to give way in a narrow part in a French village many years ago and the result wasn’t a pretty site .
In the UK all traffic is through the middle of most towns .
My town has a bypass. So do both villages either side of it, sorry make that three villages - forgot Little Driffield where they re-routed the Driffield to York traffic from the bypass when they built it so it no longer went through the village. I can think of lots of places that are now bypassed which weren’t when I started driving 20 odd years ago. The funny part for some of it is how some of those who lobbied for bypasses saw their town centres die when the bypass opened due to the massive drop off in through traffic and the obligatory shiny new Tesco and out of town shopping that opened on said bypass.