AIBU to think CF right-turners should not use the left-turn queue? DIAGRAM INCLUDED.

[Holidaydreaminggg]

Yellow drivers in very slow moving traffic. Blue cars all moving with no traffic. This means that the queue of pink cars turning right can be quite long (maybe 10 cars long).
Grey cars turning left always get out quite quickly as the blue cars have no traffic.

I notice quite a few cars that are turning right at this junction join the queue of grey cars rather than pink. (EG. The grey car circled). This slows down the people turning left as obviously these people need to wait for somebody in the yellow queue to let them in. They obviously join this queue as it’s much quicker moving than the pink queue (as the majority are turning left).

AIBU in thinking the way this junction is designed is so that the people turning left can do so quickly without having to wait for gaps in the traffic for people turning right?

The central island is fairly big and contains many trees. My drawing is quite a bit out of scale - the middle island is probably three full road widths in size.

YANBU

Great diagram but YABU.

What if the people in the grey car are following a Sat Nav that tells them to turn right at the later junction?

Sometimes people find themselves in the ‘wrong’ lane because they’re unfamiliar with the area.

If you’re getting frustrated about having to wait a few seconds, perhaps you shouldn’t be behind the wheel of a car?

Impatient stupid drivers are the ones who cause the most unnecessary accidents.

Hmmm, i don’t think the junction is big enough for a sat nav to tell them to turn right after the ‘island’. You can see the entire thing upon approach. It’s definitely “one junction” rather than two separate ones.

I’m also usually in the pink queue! But I see CF joining the grey queue to turn right.

One solution. Would be to make the island an oversized roundabout.if the flow of yellow cars is much greater than red you would prob need traffic lights to control that flow at the North end. Blue and black could continue north without lights.
Is the right turn black car a CF or just using their initiative? It’s a bit cheeky and a bit anti social but sometimes needs must.
In a parallel universe bus lanes and cycle lanes might also be useful to reduce congestion in this area.

I had a terrifying experience on a motorway a few weeks ago, where I entered the motorway on a slip road and there was only one lane open. I had to cross three closed lanes to enter in the open lane. If I had gone through the gantry I would have got points. All the drivers in the open lane refused to let me in leaving me stranded.

They were obviously convinced that I had slipped up the line of traffic to avoid the queue and had taken it upon themselves to police the situation and not let me in. What they didn’t realise was I had only just come on via the slip road.

They left me incredibly frightened for several minutes as a 5 cars kept nose to tail to not be the one to let me in.

It isn’t up to you to police the road. You don’t know the situation, and you can put other users in dangerous situations and cause unnecessary stress and distraction.

I’m sorry but what does this have to do with this question?
Nobody is going to be frightened on this junction nor will anybody accidentally be doing this. It’s all parents doing a school drop off.

Well this is the first mention of schools or anything. You basically asked if someone happens to be in the wrong lane should I let them in. In my view yes you should, we need to accept humans driving cars may make wrong decisions, it’s up to the police to police this, not other drivers

Could it also be their line of sight?

I live near a similar junction, but in my case, I prefer to use the grey lane to turn right because it's better for sight- to see a gap in the traffic. The pink one is much harder as cars come around a corner fairly fast. The other thing is that the yellow cars in my scenario often also need to turn into the road I am on, so it's win win for giving way.

Sounds like the junction needs better signage directing traffic, like left turn only lane (grey), right turn only lane (pink), and a no right turn sign for the grey cars.

No I didn’t.
I asked whether they were CFs by joining the lane of traffic turning left to turn right rather than sitting and waiting behind everyone else turning right. I notice people doing this fairly often when sat in the pink traffic myself.

No this definitely isn’t the case. The whole of the main road is straight.

There aren’t many ‘blue’ cars at all really. So the only way to pull out is by a yellow leaving a gap for you, or to cheekily pull out half way into the road and create yourself a gap (and end up holding up the eventual blue cars).

It sounds annoying but like something drivers are inevitably going to do.

I think the junction sounds like it needs redesigning as it clearly isn’t functioning as it’s meant to and this is going to cause road rage. sounds like a roundabout would help! Or to do something to ease the traffic going in the yellow direction.

It’s in a really lovely leafy area with all £1.5m+ period houses - these roads are very quiet the majority of the time. I can’t see the residents wanting a roundabout here! There are a couple of schools in the vicinity which cause the traffic.
I do agree a roundabout would work much better! It would need to have traffic lights though due to the difference in traffic from each direction and it’s just not really that sort of area.

Is the lane for turning left actually restricted to those turning left? I.E. does it have a no turning right sign?

Describing this as a terrifying experience sounds very dramatic. If you were just waiting in a closed lane for a gap in the traffic, why were you 'incredibly frightened'?

Edited for spelling mistake.

No I don’t think it does. The road is definitely angled in a way which makes it feel strange to turn right though.
There are also a few houses where the grey cars queue (if that makes a difference). So they wouldn’t be able to get to the pink side if they wanted to turn right onto the main road after coming out of their house.

It would appear that the grey queue is not "left turn only" but rather a T junction, therefore YABU

Presumably the intent was that the pink queue saved right turners some time, but in actuality it takes longer than just getting into the yellow traffic from the grey queue side. You could maybe petition the council to make the grey queue left turn only or try and split it into 2 lanes so there's one for each direction

Just sounds like an accident waiting to happen and also really impractical.

Perhaps it is in denial about the sort of area it is!

I guess they could just make it “left turn only” but that wouldn’t help the traffic issue.

Added the actual junction for extra clarity 😂

Going by your daigram alone, if someone came along wanting to turn right to join the right turning queue of traffic, it looks like they would block the lane anyway if the right turning lane was full - as in your diagram.

Yes they do. Until someone lets them in.

Until you mentioned the price of houses, I thought you lived near me. 😂

We have a junction like this, called Conker Island. If I was driving and saw a pink queue, I would nip down the grey lane and see how many pink cars I could beat out onto the main road.
It's a legal manoeuvre. If some people think it makes me a CF, then so be it.

The people living in the houses facing the island use the grey lane too, so they don't have to cross traffic to turn onto their drives.

Well you try being sat for several minutes in the closed lane of a 4 lane motorway trying to get edge into traffic, whilst people are driving aggressively to prevent you from entering the only open lane

So, realistically, it probably makes no difference to anyone.