right of way at a mini roundabout

There must have been a competition to see who could write the most about a mini roundabout - bloody 'ell!!!

Which is a complete pigs ear. The French had this due to Priorite a droite. So everyone can enter the roundabout and anyone already on it has to give way to people entering.

Spotted the obvious flaw with this?

The roundabout at the Arc de Triomphe comes to mind.

No. Under such circumstances you would be expected to set off slowly in anticipation of having to stop again immediately.

Insurance companies would normally declare such incidents as 50/50 blame.

SteveW

Much more fun when you have 6 mini roundabouts around the 6 roads leading into a big roundabout, like the so called "magic roundabout" in Hemel Hempstead (I think there may be others around the country now). I was working in Hemel at the time that roundabout was built - I had great fun :)) https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.7461858,-0.4735178,18.02z

To add to the fun, the rules in France can vary depending on which town you?re in. Bloody nightmare.

Tim

Which includes "Vehicles entering the junction must give way to vehicles approaching from the right, circulating the central island." - i.e. priority only exists once there is a vehicle on the roundabout.

SteveW

That report tries to make a virtue of what I consider a problem with mini roundabouts: the approach roads are often angled by built-out kerbs so that traffic that is going straight ahead on a junction with a side road has to deviate from the straight ahead position. Ideally all the roads should be flared slightly to the left (not the right, as often happens) to give right-turning traffic as much width as possible to get the back wheels round without having to steer excessively to the *left* as you enter and want to turn *right*.

Ideally the roundabout should be there for one reason only: to establish priority (who stops for whom), and should not force traffic to take a line that is different to the one it would take if the junction was a simple T junction. This would not go down well with the authors of the report because they condemn people driving over the painted disc, which is the line that it would take if there was no roundabout.

I'm surprised that the pedestrian crossing just before the roundabout doesn't appear to be signposted in advance (in absence of the flashing bollards that a UK zebra crossing has) - there's only the white hatched zone to denote it. When I was driving in the small towns north of Boston (eg Ipswich) I was baffled by signs "PED XING" until I worked out that it was an abbreviation for Pedestrian Crossing.

That roundabout does have give way lines across the road and YIELD written just before them. One problem I found (and there was a junction somewhere in the centre of Ipswich which was an example of this) is a side road which joins a major road on the outside of a bend, and has no give way lines to show where you should stop. When a road is straight it is easy enough to continue the kerb of the major road as an imaginary line across the side road, but that's a lot more difficult when the major road is on a sharp bend. I found I stopped further back than I should, and got peeped at, as if to say "move forwards a foot". This is a sketch

The Hemel one looks a bit weird when you see the signs on the approach, and the first time you do it, it takes balls of steel to go the wrong way round the big central roundabout although the right way round the mini roundabouts. At least it's logical and geometric.

The Magic Roundabout in Swindon is *much* worse because the roundabouts are plonked at random and I find I can never work out where traffic is going to come from next. I still prefer one big roundabout which only makes me give way once as I enter; once I am on the roundabout, everyone else has to give way to me, instead of me having to give way at every side road to traffic that wants to join. Maybe it's because I visualise it as one big junction rather than lots of mini-roundabouts which just happen to be right next to each other.

True, but it's like a pedestrian crossing where the official rules are that you only have to stop when someone has actually set foot on the crossing. In the *real* world you need to anticipate when the car (in the case of a mini roundabout) or pedestrian (in the case of a zebra) is about to do so, and slow down in anticipation - or keep going at the same speed (without accelerating) if you judge that you will not make the car/person have to change speed/course, and will be clear of their path by the time they arrive.

Yet millions of people negotiate them with ease every day.

I wonder where the problem lies?

You still get gridlocked roundabouts in the UK if one of the exits gets blocked further down the road and people queue across the entry so other traffic is blocked from going in a direction other than the one that is tailing back. But it's much less common than in countries which give priority to traffic joining over traffic on the roundabout.

I'd though that it was the Netherlands which had that rule, rather than France, but I agree that it would go hand-in-hand with the French priorité-a-droit rule which is equally nonsensical. Anyone who gives priority to a farm tractor pulling out of a farm track, over traffic that is bombing along (the equivalent of) an A road, needs their head examining. I've never understood why Australia and/or NZ have the rule that right-turning traffic on a fast road has priority over oncoming fast traffic, but I suppose it is to minimise the time that right-turners are stuck in the middle of the road being a hazard to everyone else.

Not quite the same though. If you driving onto a mini-roundabout means that someone approaching on your right, but not yet on the roundabout has to brake or even stop, that is just as legitimate as you doing so for them, as no priority exists. Of course you have to be aware of their proximity and approach speed and may well decide that asserting your right to continue is not sensible.

SteveW

I would never be so arrogant as to pull out in front a car that was approaching from the right, thinking that it was acceptable to make him brake hard simply because he hadn't yet crossed the line. In both the case of a roundabout and of a zebra crossing, I'd say that the rule should begin some way before the line, so that you judge where the person will be in relation to the line when you arrive at the roundabout or crossing, and be prepared to stop for them if they have priority. If I pulled out from a roundabout to turn right (which requires driving fairly slowly) and a car that was going faster because it was taking the straight through route had to brake to avoid hitting me, I'd deserve every decibel of his horn, on the basis of "never do anything that would make another road user have to slow down, stop or change course to avoid you". On a full size roundabout, it is reasonable to use the "crossing the line" rule, because there are several car lengths between the line and my car if I set off from the driver's left; on a mini-roundabout there's much less than a car length so the decision point has to be further back if approach speeds are similar.

Just three comments. If you extend this to its logical conclusion, all the vehicles would have to stop then we would be back where this discussion started, deciding who should go first. So far as another vehicle having to slow down is concerned, I thought drivers were supposed to approach road junctions and other hazards with caution. And finally, I thought the point of mini-roundabouts was that the rules were *exactly* the same as for any other roundabout.

Yes: approach with caution and be prepared either to stop or to keep going once you're read the road and worked out, based on the latest sighting of other cars, whether you need to stop (because the other car is too close) or can keep going (because he's a comfortable margin outside the threshold go/no-go decision point). Sometimes you can see immediately that you will definitely have to stop. Sometimes, if there is *good* (*) visibility of the road coming from your right, you can see that you can almost certainly go without needing to slow down beyond a speed to negotiate the roundabout. Usually it's somewhere between these two points and you have to defer the decision until you get closer, mindful of the fact that the closer you get, the shorter is the distance that remains in which you will be able to stop if you decide it's necessary (and therefore the slower you need to be going).

They are. All I was saying was that because the distance between you and the give way line on your right is closer, your decision point for the position of the car on your right may be before the give way line on a mini roundabout, whereas it may be after the give way line on a big roundabout.

(*) Sadly more and more roundabouts have a sign board or just a little fence to spoil your view of approaching traffic from the right in the last few seconds, meaning that you have to stop in a situation where if you hadn't had your view blocked by the sign/fence in the last couple of seconds you could have worked out that it was safe to continue. That's done for "safety reasons", which is the "anyone can be safe if they are forced to stop" school of rule-making :-)

In other words, the 'other' vehicle (to your right) is expected to slow down and to exercise caution and your suggestion that it is somehow wrong to cause another vehicle to slow down is misconceived.

Are you saying that priority starts before the vehicle enters the roundabout (on a reading of Rule 161)? This is not what others are saying. I would be interested to know how others interpret 'give priority to traffic approaching from your right' in Rule 161.

At a roundabout, I would always regard the vehicle coming from my right, irrespective of where it is, as being the one which has priority over me - in the sense that if I misjudge the speed and distance of the car on my right, any collision is 100% my fault. Irrespective of what the Highway Code may say, I don't regard traffic coming from my right as being equal priority to me and then magically change as it crosses the line; by the time it crosses the line I've already decided whether I can pull out ahead of it or will have to wait, based on his speed and position, so I've already thought "this is the traffic which I must give way to if it proves to be necessary".

All junctions have one stream that has priority and one or more streams that must give way to that priority stream. according to standard rules. The priorities are dependent on:

- priority to traffic on your right, on a roundabout

- priority to traffic that is on a major road (cross roads or T-junction sign only), when on a minor road (give way signs and dash lines across the road)

- when turning from a major road into a minor road, or at a green traffic light, priority to oncoming traffic that is coming towards me

- priority to traffic that has a green traffic light: obviously this changes in rotation to give everyone a turn

- priority to traffic that is already on a motorway or dual carriageway, over traffic that is joining at a slip road

Are there any junctions in the UK where, at any instant, more than one stream has equal priority and therefore no-one knows who must give way to whom? The nearest example I can think of is the American 4-way stop junction, but even that has rules of precedence, based on time (order of arrival) rather than space (position on road, road markings etc).