rat-running

British

noun

the practice of driving through residential side streets to avoid congested main roads

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

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rat-running

Chairman of Lenham Parish Council, John Britt, described seeing "rat-running along the county lanes to avoid the queues" with "forty tonne lorries going along single track roads with no passing places".

From BBC ● Apr. 11, 2022

The county council said its £198m project would tackle rat-running and help cut vehicles' overall carbon emissions, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

From BBC ● Feb. 2, 2022

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023