Ridiculous roundabouts
When will road engineers in New Zealand wake up to the fact they’ve turned a good invention into an evil trap?
First let me point out how a roundabout is supposed to help traffic flow. If you make a proper sized roundabout and have a single lane throughout, then the rules are very simple. “Give way to any vehicle in the roundabout.” Full stop. The end. The driver approaches the roundabout in the only lane that enters from their direction, then they check to their right to see if there is anything coming. If not, they proceed onto the roundabout and then forget about lanes and give way rules while looking for their intended exit. If necessary it is no trouble to do a complete circuit of the roundabout to be sure of one’s exit. This is the type of roundabout you find on the English motorway systems and they work extremely well.
New Zealand’s take on these roundabouts gets altogether more complex by introducing multi-lane roundabouts! Now the driver has to worry about which lane a vehicle on the roundabout is using and which lane they wish to use themselves. But wait! That vehicle on the roundabout may be required to change lanes in the roundabout before they exit. So you can take nothing for granted as you enter. Doesn’t that mean that it would do just as well with a single lane? But it gets worse. On some roundabouts, the ‘inside’ lane is only for turning right and the ‘outside’ lane is for going straight through or turning left. On others, the left lane is left turn only and the right lane is straight ahead or right turn. So now all roundabouts are not created equal and the driver has to figure out where they need to be before they get there. By this point, all of the simplicity of the English system is basically gone and it becomes just a big ugly mess with different rules to other types of intersections.
But wait! There’s more! The latest craze is what I call the “spotabout”. A roundabout so small that you have to start worrying about traffic at the other entrances instead of just those in the roundabout already. While most of these are thankfully single laned, not all are so! And because multi-directional visibility is now vital for one’s safety, to some such roundabouts they add another ‘feature’ to the structure by building a raised garden with shrubs in the middle so you cannot see what is approaching from the opposite direction. Brilliant! Some are a little more subtle, allowing you to see the oncoming vehicle, but not their low set indicator lights.
Finally, just in case the driver thought they had the measure of roundabouts, big and small, the authorities emphasise the law that says how you should signal at a roundabout. Without going into any detail, it requires you to signal at least once no matter which direction you are going in – including straight ahead! Given the approximate 1-2 seconds of occupation when going straight through the smallest ’spotabouts’ this requires some dexterity to accomplish and is totally useless to any other driver. Moreover, the road law also states that all signalling should be for a duration of at least 3 seconds. So by law you are required to stop in that roundabout!
I won’t go into the detail of why not to place a pedestrian crossing across the exit of a roundabout, nor why some roundabouts include lanes which are not legally part of the roundabout! These same people are now trying to solve Auckland traffic problems by putting traffic lights on motorway on ramps. Good grief!
Get to the point and teach Kiwis how to drive properly!
I travel frequently on English A & B roads and motorways and cover many types of roundabouts in my journey. ONLY the single lane, non-marked-up ones have any chance of success for all concerned and then not always. One favourite is a ’single-lane’ style one that has too many roads for its circumference so as you sit in one particular lane waiting to get on you have another lane right beside you, to your right waiting to get on. The natural gap that should occur with vehicles entering and leaving the roundabout doesn’t happen because the roads are all approximately one car length apart!
Other roundabouts I travel on variously have lanes explicitly marked as to which route you will be on when you exit it. These are generally at motorway junctions such as J8/9 on the M4 where I come on in the mornings & off in the evenings (the roundabout itself is 4 lanes wide). However, these only work if there are signs on the approach road telling you which lane to get into to as you approach. If these signs are obscured by a large truck or are too close to the roundabout itself and the traffic is heavy then forget it if you are in the wrong lane. You will either have to do the full circuit (not advisable because there are traffic lights all around this roundabout so it’s a slow journey) or try to slip across into the correct lane. Generally speaking of course most drivers during the rush hour are familiar with their route so there aren’t too many cars trying to cut into your lane at the last moment.
Unlike another roundabout that I thankfully don’t use any longer. This one has 3 clearly marked lanes on all sections of the road between exits & entries. There are no route numbers on the road and therefore you get the roundabout drift syndrome. The cars who zip off the motorway from the ‘fast’ lane & whip on to the roundabout in the centre then think it’s a legitimate move to simply drift into the middle lane without indicating or allowing for the fact that it’s already occupied.
Then there are the little dome roundabouts that are merely a raised lump of road painted white that are supposed to act like roundabouts. They’re generally very very tight to drive around and having no obstacle, visual or physical, most people just drive over the top of them, thus if you think that vehicle sitting opposite you is going to take time to come around the roundabout so you have time to get on you are wrong, they are going to make a right turn right in front of you! (they shouldn’t but they do). And I haven’t even discussed the Magic Roundabouts where you go on to a main roundabout via a small roundabout and you can go in either direction on the main roundabout!
So, roundabouts in England aren’t any more fun, safe or logical than NZ and the drivers aren’t any more likely to follow the rules either.