This morning's commute and other commuting stories

Blimey. A Ronnie Pickering fan?

More than once I've entered a roundabout, made eye contact with the driver of the car at the next entrance and then just had them drive onto the roundabout in front of me. The York Way/Market Rd mini roundabout seems particularly bad for it.

If I'm being kind they may have underestimated my speed, realistically though I think they're just twats with a superiority complex.

You give way to the right at roundabouts. That is a known and established fact.
Your description puts you firmly in the wrong.

Read it again, grasshopper.

I've read it twice and don't get it. He was on your right and turning right, you were going straight on. Why was he in the way?

I think I might need a diagram.

Agreed. OP rode like a dick, then got annoyed when a driver called them out on it.

I was on the roundabout before he was. Effectively when he entered he was behind me. If I had been a car he would have been close to hitting the back of me; as it was he tried to steer round me.

Thought so. Comment needs moving to iittscobc thread.

I read it again, cricket.
Still don't make sense.

I don't really understand the description, either, and it would help to be pointed to the actual junction in question. However, from what I think I understand about the description, Sharkstar is saying that he entered the circulatory carriageway first, and that the driver should therefore have stayed behind him in circulating rather than cutting him up, only to then have to slow down again when turning right.

It's hard to call without more information, though. It sounds as if it was a small roundabout, perhaps a mini-roundabout?

(One problem is that a significant number of road users don't understand the rules governing roundabouts, and even more don't understand the rules for mini-roundabouts.)

Sharkstar your post is bizarre. You complain that he would have been able to see you from tens of metres back. By logical extension, you could see him as well. So rather than doing the normal thing and slowing down to allow him to go around with priority, you decided to race to the roundabout so you could get there first and go around yourself? I sympathise with anybody that has to contend with this type of inconsiderate behaviour...

It was a mini roundabout. The situation was pretty much as Oliver says. On most roads the car would have been turning right off a side road onto the road I was riding down. But this junction is configured as a mini-roundabout. I am going straight, heading for the first exit (basically straight ahead). The car is entering through what is for me the second exit, to my right. I get onto the roundabout first. Once I am on the single lane mini roundabout I am not obliged to give way to the right; those behind me are obliged not to run me off the road. I hope this makes the situation clear.

I didn't speed up, for the record.

Yup.
You give way to the right.

The way you described it in your post you both entered at speed with you only marginally ahead. Sounds like a pretty dumb thing to do. Was the driver indicating right?

You can't give way to the right if you're already on the roundabout.

You come across like the nodders I see pulling dick moves on my way to work. Were you filming it on a go pro and shaking your head too?

I suppose that I honestly believed he would do the decent thing and, seeing that I was on the roundabout as he entered it, slow down and get behind me. In fact, even when he overtook me on the roundabout I didn't see it as a problem: we were both aware of one another and had our vehicles under control. It didn't at any point feel like a dangerous situation. Which is why his reaction was so startling.

What Sharkstar describes is a pretty common problem at mini-roundabouts that replace what would have been a priority junction with give-way lines (at the mouth(s) of the side street(s)) before.

Studies have usually claimed that mini-roundabouts in such situations have a better crash record than priority junctions, which is why loads were created in the 90s and 00s. I remember engineers could get an extra £50k towards schemes when applying under TfL's Local Safety Scheme funding stream about ten years ago. While scheme costs were already rising apace, that was still a substantial whack on top of any other funding they might have had, so many went for it. (Sharkstar's junction may not be in London, but the situation was probably similar elsewhere.)

In some situations, they work well, but only if you have good 'gateway features' on the run-up to them, e.g. carriageway narrowing that slows down drivers approaching the junction. They work particularly badly where a local rat-run merges with a main street so that a turning manoeuvre is required of rat-runners. I suspect the driver's behaviour here indicates that they came out of a rat-run that they expected would save them time.

The main problem with them is basically caused by being inserted into a fairly narrow junction envelope (many urban mini-roundabouts actually fail to fulfil the design requirement that they must allow for a full turning circle for a car) and road user behaviour there consequently continues to treat them as if they were a priority junction. The junction of Southgate Road and Northchurch Road, N1, is a good example of this.

This means that drivers on the main alignment will generally come into conflict with entrants from the more minor arms, because they assume that the main alignment continues to have priority. If the circulatory carriageway (which in theory exists at mini-roundabouts, too, although in practice it is often not even circular, and in any event too tight to allow the mini-roundabout to be navigated without over-running onto the central blob of paint) is too narrow, it is (a) hard to tell which vehicle entered it first, again the case here, and (b) it appears irrelevant which vehicle enters it first, as conflicting movments will be so close together that it can easily happen for a driver to assume they ought to have priority over a cyclist who narrowly beats them to it.

Again, the theory is that owing to being, on paper, required to circumnavigate the central blob (only to be over-run when absolutely necessary, e.g. for larger vehicles) when negotiating a mini-roundabout, drivers will slow down, which is supposed to make mini-roundabouts safer. In practice, very few drivers actually know that they are supposed to avoid over-running the central blob, very few slow down (unless there are appropriate 'gateway features', and very few know how to give way properly.

(I find mini-roundabouts quite fascinatingly misconceived as applied to most situations. There are well-designed ones that work well, but most don't.)

It didn't at any point feel like a dangerous situation. Which is why his reaction was so startling.

Well, it didn't feel like a dangerous situation to you, but for the tender of nerves, of course, it can look very different. Also, many people have a rage and anger stored up inside them that can be triggered by such situations.

You come across like the nodders I see pulling dick moves on my way to work. Were you filming it on a go pro and shaking your head too?

It's useful behaviour if you meet Sharkstar in the pub. You just let him get to the bar first so that he gets the next round in.

This happened to me in dulwich. With a riverford delivery driver. He wanted the row, I just tweeted to his company.

It didn't make me feel any better.

Good first commute till i had a twat runner who decided to run out across the cycle oath at the start of brixton road vy oval. Did not even look back afterwards

I think the roundabout is the one at RH6 9BW. I remembered the side road coming in at a right angle, but that seems to be a false memory.

That's a full roundabout, though, not a mini-roundabout. None of what I wrote above applies here. Not the best design I've ever seen, but not the worst by any means. Are you sure it was that one? The driver coming in from the right would most certainly not have been able to see you here until quite late.