no you don't bring flowing non busy traffic to a standstill to let someone out

[agentEgypt]

This happens a lot where I live. Your behind another car going 30-40, they decide to let a car out so bring themselves and you to a standstill to do so. The other car doesn't react quickly to what is happening so waits a bit longer until they join the traffic. I can understand if its busy or stuck in a q, but all the time it happens where the road is free behind or one more car behind. So if they just carried on they could go after we pass. The only thing it does is delay everyone and waste fuel.

I have literally been waiting all my life for this thread. I find myself nodding, and muttering "f* yes" at most of the posts. The thing is, if we all stop to let people out of side streets we'd never bloody well get anywhere.

There's a traffic light I occasionally have the misfortune of driving through where you have to wait for 4 or 5 changes during busy periods before you get to the front. There is a side road around 4 cars from the lights, and quite a few cars come out of there (it's a small terrace road used as a bit of a rat run) without traffic ever having to queue. When I've been waiting 5 minutes in the queue the last thing I feel like doing is letting in someone who's just driven at speed down the empty side road and is expecting to push in to the long suffering queue.

I live by a school and am amazed by the number of parents who think it is acceptable to suddenly stop at the zebra crossing (no one waiting to cross) . The children get out of the car and then the parent waits a bit longer for the children to cross.

Have a list of complaints of various stupid things !!!

YANBU
The other day someone stopped on a busy roundabout to let a stream of cars out of the junction. That wasn't a good start to my morning!!

Everyone should be made to retest every 3 years or so. Of course they government would lose plenty in motoring tax!

welshmaenad At a stab, the ones in the Hufhwy Code that outline who has right of way?

Loving Hufhwy Code. Sounds so much nicer than the boring Highway Code...

Tbh driving in london is alot easier than driving in the country. I grow up in country so used to both. Just moved out of london and slightly shocked that people dont know how to use roundabouts where i am now. Mentioned to a local and they agreed. The reason why london driving is easier....its alot slower as always in queues...

My bugbear are the idiots who don't use their mirrors, and who stop/slow to let a car in, not realising that I am the only car behind for miles. It would have been quicker for all (and kinder to the environment) to have carried on, let me carry on, and them the waiting car/pedestrian will have a completely free road.

Or (less frustrating) I am that front car. I see someone waiting to turn out. Look in my mirror. See one solitary car, so I decide to carry on, assuming car behind will too, and the waiting car will have a clear road. No ! I look in the mirror, and see the car behind slowing/stopping to let the other car out when - if they'd used their mirrors - they should have carried on and the waiting car would have had a clear road.

When I used to work in the motor trade, a colleague once used to tweak rear view mirrors during a service. It was quite illuminating how many cars came back for their next service with the mirror in the same position.

I'm obsessive about mirrors. I've twice been stationary, and managed to avoid being rear-ended by watching the mirror.

Things aren't helped by different rules in Europe either. I seem to recall there's a French rule that effectively reverses roundabout priorities, and major/minor road precedence (you have to stop to let cars from a minor road onto a major road).

So if there are any non-UK drivers out there ....

When I was a child, as a treat my Dad took me to the airport to meet my Uncle from holiday. As we approached the airport, I remember a car going the wrong way round a roundabout. My Dad (who did a lot of airport pickups for his work) said it happened a lot. People got off a plane, hired a car, and forgot they had to drive on the left. I laughed at such idiots. Then, fast forward 25 years, and I'm collecting my hire car in Spain, and first roundabout - yup ! - I took it the wrong way .

Vastly amused at the suggestion that the Hufhwy Code doesn't bother offering any thoughts to guide drivers' giving-way behaviour at junctions, roundabouts etc. It's not not as if a total free-for-all would be ridiculously dangerous or anything. What do you do when approaching a roundabout then, just sail serenely onto it no matter what traffic may be approaching from the right? What are you, French?*

Try searching the Hufhwy Code again, looking for "priority" instead of "right of way". The former is now the preferred term. It says quite a lot about it. Unsurprisingly.

*I'm not being randomly xenophobic, I once had a French driver do this to me on a UK roundabout. Turns out that in France, traffic joining the roundabout has priority over traffic already on it ie the reverse of how we do it here.

Apparently, they've changed the law in France now. Traffic on the roundabout now has priority. Which I bet means that, practically speaking, everyone under a certain age lets drivers already on a roundabout have priority, and everybody over a certain age lets drivers joining a roundabout have priority.

I bet there are threads aplenty on the subject on the French equivalent of MN .

What makes it worse in France is that some roundabouts are the same as UK ones and some of give way to people joining. You have to be observant enough to spot the sign and then remember which is which.

I learned to drive in Swindon and had to master the Magic Roundabout pretty early on, and now I live in Milton Keynes, home of the roundabout. People who can't do them properly boil my blood.

Filet de Mamans

Est-ce que ma requête soit excessive?

We used to live in Kent. One day I saw a Dutch car reversing round a roundabout. Apparently they don't have them in the Netherlands.

Kent was almost as bad as cornwall tbh. But in fairness, mostly due to drivers who'd just come off the ferry.

No such excuse down here.

PuntasticUsername

Filet de Mamans

very droll (excusez-moi, tres jolie ) Mais je croix les mamans Francais soit s'appelle cette place "Mumsnet" - avec deux doights a la acadamie Francais. (Je parle pas Francais pour trop ans, mais je suis content de moi )

If you want to talk about countries that don't have roundabouts (Brummie: "islands", US: "circulatory systems") then most of the US doesn't. When I was in Louisiana, there's one somewhere near the Huey Long bridge. We started seeing warning signs 10 miles off, giving us a chance to "detour avoiding circulatory system".

If you're a fan of Mythbusters, they recently tested a myth than roundabouts (European) are more efficient than 4-way stops (US). They had to give all the volunteers a primer on how roundabouts work.

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Roundabouts are waaaaaaaaaaay more efficient than 4 ways stops. Presumably why most UK ones have traffic lights now (effectively making them 4-way stops). We can't be helping private transport can we ?

Sure, but UK roundabouts are getting so big that it would be impractical to use them without traffic lights because it's no longer possible to see approaching traffic. Small roundabouts, where we are, have no traffic lights and also some only use them at peak times.

To my mind, traffic lights on a roundabout is saying the roundabout is a waste of space - the traffic flow is so unequal that one set of roads would never get on otherwise.

However, the main reason, as with all traffic engineering these days, is to slow traffic down. It's been a traffic planning commandment for decades that you must never, ever make a car journey easier. Hence the 2 bypasses in Birmingham (A38) which take twice as long as before (tip if you're coming into town. Drive through Northfield. It's quicker than going round).

I presume that's the motive behind another recent development, where road junctions are re-engineered with the give ways on the major roads allowing minor roads in (i.e. the opposite to what you'd expect). I blame a shadowy cabal of bodyshops .....

But, surely, otherwise, you'd need this American style malarky of overpasses and underpasses where the highways all intermingle, like a ton of spaghetti? How else would you conjoin up to a dozen sections of six multiple lane roads?

DoraGora

But, surely, otherwise, you'd need this American style malarky of overpasses and underpasses where the highways all intermingle, like a ton of spaghetti? How else would you conjoin up to a dozen sections of six multiple lane roads?

Don't worry, that won't happen here - far too convenient for motorists.

No, we'll see more pedestrian lights (with longer phases). More junctions with pedestrian and traffic lights deliberately out-of-phase (this is a doozy), more bypasses which take longer than the previous route, and (my favourite, as it is so relentlessly European) more shared spaces. Oh, and as suggested previously, more junctions with a counter-intuitive right-of-way.

They'll grind us down eventually.

Theres a french mn?