Roundabouts are meant to move traffic more efficiently,
That's true. It is also true that roundabouts are substantially safer than either stop signs or stoplights. Occasionally people blow through stop signs or stop lights at high speed and the resulting collisions are quite deadly. Roundabouts on the other hand requires slowing down to navigate, soany collisions occur at slower speeds and more glacing blow instead of a T-Bone.
There's only one roundabout rule to learn other than staying in your lane: yield left
Absolutely!
I’ve lived and driven quite a bit in the UK. There is ONE other rule: USE your turn signal! When you are sitting and waiting to turn into a roundabout, it helps if you know the vehicle coming at you is turning before it gets to you, leaving you a gap to turn into.
There are other rules about ‘being in the right lane’. In the UK they can be 3 or 4 lanes wide. One near where I stay in Scotland is 5 lanes wide, receiving traffic from 7 different roads - including two 2-lane 50+ mph roads. And just for fun - it also has multiple traffic lights that blink differently depending on whether you are exiting the roundabout or continuing around!
For real horror - google the famous ‘Magic Roundabout’ near Swindon, England. One large Roundabout with 5 or 6 attached smaller ones on the periphery of the larger one.
My take: Not only do US drivers not understand how to drive them, but US Engineers don't design them properly - they are far too small in diameter to work properly. It’s not hard to understand why truckers hate them!
I've driven through one of these near Colchester--our b and b hosts called it an "Olympic Roundabout" because of the 5 smaller rings but it sounds like it is also called a Magic Roundabout. Somehow I survived doing that in a right hand drive car.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_(Colchester)
one of my favorite memories of travelling in Italy was sitting on a bench in the middle of a round-about in Florence drinking a bottle of nice red wine and watching all the vehicles of every nature coming from every direction going in every/any direction all at the same time.
It was like a Benny Hill episode.
Somehow no one gets killed and traffic flows.
I was told that in Italy you drive expecting complete chaos - so you are always ready for an incident. While in Germany they expect all rules to be followed to the letter at all times, so when a rule isn't followed- catastrophic pile up because no one expects it. I drove in Italy. I learned quickly that a blind curve means someone will be coming around it in the wrong lane, so get as far over to the right as possible.
Since I have no expectations of forgiveness, I don't do it in the first place. That loop hole needs to be closed to everyone.
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Since I have no expectations of forgiveness, I don't do it in the first place. That loop hole needs to be closed to everyone.
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