clipping off

[keannu]

1.By "keep traffic flowing", did the officers try to stop traffic flow or make it flow naturally, not disturbed by their movement? I thinkk the latter.
2.What does this "clipping off parts of houses" mean?

ex)..When we joined the mass movement to the ports, the roads were clogged with every sort of vehicle imaginable from bicycles and motor-bikes, to huge trucks pulling trailers of supplies and equipment. .. Movement officers fought to keep traffic flowing on England's ancient and narrow roads.Trucks squeezed through the villages and eased around corners, often clipping off parts of houses that sat too close to the street...

[SoothingDave]

1. They tried to keep traffic flowing by providing some order to the chaos. "Naturally" there would have been gridlock.
2. Literally knocking pieces of the buildings off.

[keannu]

They must not have clipped off(cut off) parts of houses, it must be a mephator. Does it really mean "cutting off" or "colliding with or hit houses"?

[SoothingDave]

Yes. It's talking about trucks squeezing around corners on narrow streets. There is no indication that it is not meant literally.

[emsr2d2]

It is definitely meant literally. I know someone who owns a house on a corner and parts of her garden wall are regularly demolished by drivers who cut the corner too tightly. If she didn't have a front garden and her actual house was right on the corner, it would be her living room wall they would be driving into!

[Tdol]

I lived in a village on a narrow bend and there were regular crashes into the church wall opposite.
Then the early days of SatNav sent lorries into all sorts of narrow roads.