highway code

[Harry Bloomfield, Esq.]

Ian Jackson explained on 02/08/2019 :

I agree with that!

[Jim GM4DHJ ...]

no they q to go left ot straight on .....

[Jim GM4DHJ ...]

the snag is if you go into the outer lane to go straight on you meet this coming off the roundabout....just what we have been talking about! ...

https://www.google.com/maps/@55.47459,-4.5856413,3a,75y,158.9h,100.8t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1szw9uAdlbApn_bx1s0imlMw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

[T i m]

Until it doesn't. Until someone misjudges it and it all ends in tears. That's why they get you to do it far away from the problem and 'most people' do just that.

Quite, but not the same issue as the merging at speed one.

Or not ... when they are up inside some HGV who isn't going to be bullied.

Cheers, T i m

[NY]

That's fine as long as everyone has the same perception of who was there first. If not, two cars set off simultaneously, both back off and wait for the other, and then they both retry at about the same time - rinse and repeat!

I was staying with my sister who lived near Boston, and one day we went to Cape Cod. I was driving (having got my confidence in around-town driving). As you enter the "armpit" of the peninsular of Cape Cod, there is a big roundabout with about six of eight roads joining - one of the very few "rotaries" in the part of America (at least in the late 90s). I took it in my stride, applying normal UK rules apart from doing everything as a mirror-image, and when we stopped a bit further along the Cape, a guy came up to me and said he'd been behind me and had been gobsmacked at the way I'd managed to go round this "thing", changing lanes effortlessly without missing my turning and having to go round again. He was even more gobsmacked when he heard my English accent and realised I was driving on what, for me, was the wrong side of the road. He made me feel slightly superhuman - I'm not sure whether it was flattering or cringeworthy ;-)

I was interested by the differences between UK and US driving:

- All distances on signs on minor roads are measured in feet ("roadworks for

3000 feet", "restrooms - 1000 feet" etc); we're used to miles, fractions of a mile and yards, but then Americans do like expressing things as a large numbers of small units (eg people's weights in pounds rather than stones and pounds)

- Painted stop/give way lines at junctions are often non-existent; if the road you are joining is straight, it's easy enough to extrapolate the kerb line across your road to work out where to stop, but it's bloody difficult where there is a side road that joins on the outside of a bend

- Drivers in small towns are unbelievably benevolent to pedestrians: on several occasions I was walking along a pavement (sorry, sidewalk) and turned my head to look at a building on the other side of the road as I carried on walking along the road - immediately cars would stop (not at a pedestrian crossing) thinking I wanted to cross

- All road signs have words, though those "words" may not make sense: it took me a long time to work out that a sign "PED XING" meant "pedestrian crossing" (what we'd call a zebra crossing)

- Motorway/freeway/expressway junctions often have a lane-drop so if you are in the extreme right-hand lane and you approach a junction, you need to move to Lane 2 in advance otherwise you find yourself being taken off at the junction; having left the through route on a slip road, there is sometimes a VERY sharp bend (an elbow rather than a constant-radius curve) - plan to slow down a LOT if you are coming off :-(

- A lot of speed limits end in 5: 15, 25, 35 mph

- School buses are a PITA because they drive too fast to be able to overtake when there's oncoming traffic, but you are NOT ALLOWED to overtake them when they are stationary and displaying their flashing red lights, because that's when children are getting on or off: moral - if you get behind one, you are there for the duration and must stop behind it whenever it stops

- Lane discipline on motorways etc is non-existent: they overtake equally frequently either side: this scares the shit out of me - maybe I'm too used to driving on British motorways where overtaking on the left is fairly rare so you get intot he bad habit of not checking every time you move from Lane

3 to 2 or 2 to 1

- Road atlases (at least the one my sister bought of Massachusetts) are bizarre: instead of having maps laid out in a regular grid in the order west to east and then north to south, the pages are organised by "town", and each town's map is at a different scale (WTF?) so it is very difficult to follow your route as you go east to west or north to south because you are not going from one page to the next one or the next+(some increment), but instead are jumping around at random, and because of the difference in scale and therefore level of detail, it is difficult to find any common ground between one map and the next to work out where you are on the new map. How many magic mushrooms do you need to eat/smoke/mainline before you come up with the idea of a map with random page ordering (well, alphabetic by "town") and non-uniform scale? This was before the days of satnav; nowadays you've got satnav devices and phone apps which make paper maps almost redundant (I still keep one in my car as a backup - but I've never needed to use it in the last 10 years or so). ("Town" really means "small region" rather than built-up area that ends when the housing ends - there can be lots of small "village-type" communities which are all in the same town, so you can't predict (and don't really care!) which "town" you are currently in.)

[Steve Walker]

Except that you can merge when there is a gap, with little adjustment of speed and so not slow everything down, whereas merging at the pinch-point often means cutting into a small gap, causing those behind to brake and the ripple effect to bring the whole road to a halt or slowing to a stop yourself and holding up the traffic behind.

SteveW

[T i m]

?backward traveling wave? ;-)

Bingo. It's as if Harry has never actually driven! ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[dennis]

And hit the car that was indicating to move from lane 1 to lane 2 and not undertaking at all.

Nice that you admit your mistakes but doing something about it is necessary.

[Davey]

I was once driving from LA to San Francisco using the freeway, with visitors from the UK on board, and as I approached a joining road, I saw another car on the on-ramp, so I moved out to the left lane to give it room. But it not only joined the freeway, but kept on going into my lane, until application of horn and severe braking woke the driver up to the fact that other vehicles use the road as well. The scourge of 'left-lane bandits' is common all over the country.

[Ian Jackson]

In message [e-mail], T i m [e-mail]> writes

What I would like to see are signs saying: "Carriageways merge in 400 yards - Merge now" followed by "Carriageways merge in 200 yards - Merge NOW" followed by "Carriageways merge in 100 yards - If YOU haven't merged by now, you're NICKED!"

[T i m]

<snip>

That would be good, supported by a lane camera (like they use on bus lanes).

Unless the fine was accompanied by points on yer licence, I suspect many of those who abuse the system regularly (when the traffic is moving freely) will carry on doing it and pay the fine (looking at the cost of the cars they drive).

Cheers, T i m

[Ian Jackson]

In message <qi2a13$mp2$ [e-mail], NY [e-mail] writes

I can't disagree with any of what you say. Some of the USA is very well-organised, but some doesn't quite seem to be 'joined up' (but I suppose it IS a big place). I do like those speed limits that end in 5, most of which are far more appropriate to the actual situation than our 'zeros', and are therefore more likely to be obeyed.

[Ian Jackson]

In message <qi2mhf$ahm$ [e-mail], Davey [e-mail] writes

That sort of thing happens in the UK too. It's not uncommon to see a car joining a motorway, and regardless of the amount of traffic, it simply continues diagonally across Lane 1 and Lane 2, to Lane 3.

[Ian Jackson]

What's the problem, Jim? It looks like there's plenty of warning to get merged with the nearside lane.

[Harry Bloomfield, Esq.]

Steve Walker brought next idea :

Not if the merge is orderly and with cooperation from both lanes, which is what you get as a result of no one being able to bypass the queue.

Early merges, leave one lane less than fully occupied and space for the impatient to bypass the queue.

[Ian Jackson]

In message <qi3i2e$598$ [e-mail], Harry Bloomfield <?.?@NOSPAM.tiscali.co.uk.invalid> writes

What you're saying is that late, 'co-operative' mergers force the 'unco-operative' would-be queue-jumpers to 'co-operate'. Well, this is true - but it often leads to a log-jam at the pinch-point, and that creates tail-backs that probably would not have happened if everyone had merged early, and (if possible) maintained speed.

[T i m]

We did this very thing earlier, merged (pretty well) *at* the long-standing pinch point because it is generally relatively slow moving traffic (30-40 mph), the ramp up to the point quite short and traffic light enough for it to continue to work well.

Well, in actual fact we were on the inside and 'priority' lane and those in the outside lane have to merge (and so 'co-operate') with us.

Today they did, in the rush hour it's yer basic zip (respected by all but the odd van and some flash boys (typically) trying to take the p) and a mix of effectiveness at speeds / loads in-between. The bunching only generally occurs when people in the outside lane try to overtake into the pinch point, where is blatantly nowhere for them to go. To resist that (for the benefit of all, even the w&nkers, if only they could see it), many will start to straddle the line early.

Cheers, T i m

[Harry Bloomfield, Esq.]

Ian Jackson has brought this to us :

In my experience, yes..

[Harry Bloomfield, Esq.]

NY formulated the question :

I find that often happens here, in the town where I live too.

[bert]

In article [e-mail]>, Ian Jackson [e-mail]> writes

Whichever way you do it 3 into 2 doesn't go.