I had yet another almost accident on the way to uni this morning. There is a roundabout (see below & ignore lane closed bits) that has had the same set of rules since it was built. Some of the locals who live in the suburb that comes out at Yolanda drive still have problems with it however. The problem is that the left lane coming out of Yolanda can turn left, go straight or turn right. The round about is designed so that if you are coming from Nathan street and want to turn right into discovery drive, you go straight ahead and when you get to the turn, you go in the left lane. You aren't allowed to cut across the solid line and go into the right lane unless you are doing a U-turn. This is set up because if you were exiting from the right lane into discovery drive and someone was turning right from the left lane from Yolanda, they'd crash into you.
If you are on the Nathan street approach and turning right and you are on the roundabout itself, everyone from Yolanda has to give way, not just the right lane (the same as if you were going straight ahead from that lane) - see below - yellow has right of way if they are on the roundabout first
The problem is that the "red" people often think that they are fine to drive into the left lane. Hence me almost hitting the car that I was assuming was turning left from Yolanda until it kept coming forward as I was turning right - he was assuming I would turn in the right lane and is still probably swearing about the driver who doesn't know the road rules (which I looked up very carefully when the roundabout first went in - the council put maps up with arrows and notes about who gave way).
The left lane at Yolanda needs to be left turn only. It might slow up exiting traffic but it will stop the idiots who don't bother to check the road rules or take note of solid line marking.
3 comments:
I'm going to assume you sourced your examples from somewhere and didn't spend hours drawing them up in a fury.
Sounds like you forgot the primary road rule Jenny, which is:
1. Never assume these idiots are going to obey the road rules.
(that comment's from me - click wrong button)
I did indeed source my examples, though the adding of arrows to both of them were due to me spending hours drawing furiously...well, maybe some minutes anyway.
You are the second person to tell me the primary road rule - the first was a motorcyclist. He's survived to be an old motorcyclist by following the first rule.
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