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Ayn Rand it and just allow private ownership of the roads everywhere. Totally ad-hoc, with non-standard markings, conventions, and traffic "laws" that would show up in your road contract. You would have to read the road contract everytime you drove through a new area with roads operated by a different company. That is until a savior road monopolist finally took over all the markets by getting the largest established base and then using his network effect advantage to lock out other roads until they all caved in. Said monopolist could just eliminate the congestion by fiat.

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No offense but hypothetically if we had private ownership they would agree with a standard marking. Its naive to assume otherwise. I don't agree with ayn rand on all things but corporations have standards....

Countries have private ownership of their roads with respect to other countries, and they all have their own markings, traffic laws, etc.

Nope. Several countries in Europe use the same markings.

PS: There is a reason you can get an International Driver's License.

The EU practically is a country. There are plenty of other counter examples, mostly countries that were formally some part of an imperialist empire, or essentially still are (many countries in the Caribbean).

When your an island it's not that important but counties that share borders tend to have similar road markings, signs, stoplights etc.

The differences between countries' marking and traffic laws are small compared to the broad commonalities. Close countries tend to harmonize. And a network of interlinked but mildly competitive roads in a single country would have even stronger incentives to harmonize.

But also: a trend in traffic control is to reduce the markings, so that people pay closer attention, using their innate intelligence to drive cooperatively. (The idea goes by the names 'psychological traffic calming' or 'naked roads'.) Speeds go down a little; accidents go down a lot. It seems traditional markings lead to overconfidence -- a destructive abdication of personal responsibility to the authoritative sign-makers.

So even if a patchwork of private roads couldn't agree on any signage standards, and just tore out all the signs (as the safest, liability-reducing option), we might wind up better off. (But of course, freeways and major thoroughfares/intersections would just work the same as they do absolutely everywhere else, under any ownership system.)

And the unwashed masses would put up with 10 different traffic sign symbolic paradigms and roadblocks by the local owners because they simply felt like blocking traffic for better prices...this wouldn't cause the slightest stir among the millions of people and commerce it would affect...would it?

Or you could use privatization and use a tiny, well-placed amount of carefully considered government intervention and have awesome results. Example: The East Side of Santiago de Chile. Tolls do not slow traffic because they are done by RFID tags and ... OK, I don't have that much data behind me, but the data point that is Daniel Cussen says the system is effective. People I talk to generally agree.

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