New Jersey's divided highways are full of jughandles, and over at the Department of Transportation, a lot goes into planning these made-in-New Jersey creations.

The basic goal is to keep traffic moving safely by avoiding left turns and building curved ramps off the right lanes.

“For any standard intersection, you have 32 conflict points,” said Syed Kazmi, an executive manager at the NJ Bureau of Traffic Engineering. “Taking the left turns out of the mix, you cut the conflict points in half.”

Kazmi says the first jughandles came about in New Jersey around the 1950s.

They’re common in New Jersey, but not as much in other states.

The DOT has to make sure a “Jersey left” doesn’t confuse visitors.

“We have advanced signing for people to know in advance that you need to be in the right lanes to make all those turns - left, U,” Kazmi said.

When those jughandles get crowded, they can be frustrating. Kazmi says that’s where traffic studies help.

“If you travel on Route 1 - which I’ve done the last 25 years, every day - I know those jughandles are, kind of, over capacity at this time,” said Kazmi. “Last year, two years ago, we changed the phasing for those jughandles. All the timing, we have a state of the art system there, and the movements are very different than they used to be.”

But the jughandle isn’t the only traffic innovation that started in the Garden State.

“New Jersey is popular - I will say globally - for Jersey barriers,” said Kazmi. “I’ve been to England, I’ve been to Asia, everyone calls it Jersey barriers, which makes me very proud.”

Despite the toll that traffic can take on commuting, jughandles and Jersey barriers can offer some state pride about staying on the path and in the right.