To have turned my car engine off...

[TheFenceGaveMeSplinters]

...and refused to reverse back (onto a roundabout) when someone tried to force their way up the road when I was coming down and the obstruction was on their side?

The roads near me are shit. They are main roads but they are not big enough for cars to be parked on one side and for traffic to flow both ways easily.

One particular road leads up to a mini-roundabout. The mini roundabout has three exits: Mine which I took today, another which connects to a road that least to the High Street, and schools, and the other to the station.

One side of this road that I have to go down is always full of parked cars and the only gaps are where people's driveways are. It causes absolute chaos in rush hour.

This particular bit of the road is about 0.2 miles long and in rush hour it can take 30 minutes to get down it. Cars regularly try and force their way up the hill (which is the side the parked cars are on). The road is not wide enough for them to do this and for oncoming traffic to be able to get down the road. This often means the queues go back over the roundabout because people cannot get down the road because it is also on a bend (so you cannot see these wankers are obstructing until you are on the roundabout) and it brings everything to a halt.

Today, I turned onto the road and there was nothing there so I started driving down😯A car drove out of a driveway and began to drive up the hill. There were several spaces they should have pulled into (given the obstruction was on their side as were the passing spaces) or they even could have pulled back into their driveway, but they kept coming up. There was nowhere for me to go. The curb on the left hand side does not exist. Instead, it is a metal barrier behind which is a sharp drop. Another car had already come around the roundabout behind me.

They ground to a halt - close enough it set off my front-parking sensors (I had already stopped). And then gesticulated and swore at me. I just shook my head and made it clear I would not be reversing back onto a roundabout which would have been my only option given how close the parked cars go to the roundabout. They swore and gesticulated a bit more. I just shrugged, turned my engine off and waited them out.

In the end they admitted defeat and reversed back, as did the cars behind them that had tried to force their way up, and I drove past.

DSis (cringing in the front seat the whole time) thinks I was unreasonable and should have reversed onto the roundabout. I think not. Only an idiot reverses onto a roundabout, surely?!

Diagram attached. Needless to say, I am more Picasso than Monet.

That looks exactly like one of the roads in my neighbouring village. YWNBU

Well done you 👏 I had this a few years ago when a male driver became verbally aggressive with me in a similar situation. He expected me to reverse with a car immediately behind me. I shrugged and waited. Eventually, he reversed and I drove on whilst chuntering to myself what an entitled arse he was!

DH is a bus driver and people getting out of their cars to argue with him with situations like this used to be a daily occurrence despite the fact he couldn’t reverse the bus. He would do the same as the OP though, turn the engine off and just wait for them to finish then get back in the car and reverse. He never goaded them but he always reminded them they were on camera every time one of them shouted “I’ll have your job”.

He left that company for a longer distance one so he doesn’t have to do town service and deal with those drivers now at least.

In your opening post you said someone else had come round the roundabout behind you. So you wouldn’t have been able to reverse onto the roundabout either. I had a similar thing but I was behind a lorry that decided he didn’t want to go down this one way street, and tried to make me reverse back onto the roundabout. I stood firm!!

Right of way is not hard and fast and depends on lots of things. Drivers coming up hill normally have priority; driver without obstruction on their side doesn’t necessarily have priority, if the other car was already committed then they have priority; reversing back on to a roundabout shouldn’t ever been done unless in extreme circumstances though.
Road sounds like a complete nightmare and residents should be writing to their Counsellors and Highways to get double yellows put on the road near the junctions as some people don’t seem to be able to remember the bit in the Highway Code that states you shouldn’t park within 10 metres of a junction and actually need to see double yellow lines to stop them parking near them

Yes this.

I haven't driven in a really long time and my license isn't from the UK so I could be wrong in this situation, but I was taught that cars going uphill had priority over those going downhill. It would depend how steep the hill is though.

Doesn’t the Highway Code also say you should give way to traffic coming up a hill if possible. Doesn’t excuse this situation I don’t think - the OP was already moving albeit downhill, and reversing on to a roundabout is clearly dangerous. But I can see how a resident who struggles to get off their drive because everyone uses a residential street as a rat-run would get frustrated. Really the council should paint double yellow lines to prevent parking and ease traffic flow, but I suspect the residents wouldn’t like that either :)

It would be dangerous to reverse onto a roundabout, can't believe the other driver (or your sister!) expected you to! You were right to wait for the other driver to reverse.

The thing about uphill/downhill…if there’s a situation where one needs to reverse (which could be due to a narrow road rather than either not having given way) is the one who was going downhill now the uphill car?