It is safe to say that many of us see roundabouts as accidents waiting to happen. We get annoyed when drivers leave at the first exit they arrive at without the bother to notify you of their actions, or decide to keep on driving around the roundabout in whatever lane they have chosen and exit whenever it seems to please them, again, without notifying anybody!
Sue Papworth, a very experienced and highly recommended driving instructor of Toad's School of Driving in Cambridge, kindly explains how best to tackle the roundabout.
On approach to a roundabout where you intend to turn left, position your vehicle to the nearside of your lane, adjust your speed on approach and simply apply your left signal in a timely manner, not too early nor too late, to advice others of your intentions. Remember to turn it off, once you have negotiated the turn, if your car does not do it automatically as you straighten up. In this way, your position and your speed of approach will provide some indication to others where you might be going, which is then confirmed by the left turn signal.
Similarly, when you intend to turn right, adjust your road position more to the right (on a single lane) or to the right lane on a road that has more than one lane, or in the lanes designated by road markings; and again provide a timely signal to the right; not to early nor too late. As you enter the roundabout stay to the right, or in the lane designated for your intended path for the exit you intend to leave by. As you pass the exit prior to the one you intend to leave by, provide a left signal to inform others of your intention to leave the roundabout.
It is quite important that relying on others signals alone is not necessarily a good idea, as they may have left it on from a previous action and it has not cancelled, so you will need to gain experience by assessing their road position and the speed at which they are negotiating the roundabout. If in doubt - don't move!
When dealing with Mini roundabouts the principles are the same, be they separate or close together as in the picture here. They are treated as two separate roundabouts. The only difference is that if there is no time to signal your intention to leave, then just steer, as steering will stop you crashing, whereas signalling will not!
Again on mini roundabouts, when going ahead, with traffic heading towards you, it can be helpful to provide a left signal as you are about to drive past the give way lines to afford the opposing traffic the knowledge of your intentions which will keep the flow of traffic moving, instead of having to stop because no information was given by you.
Please share this information to all those you think might find it useful!
The images used in this blog have been shared from https://commons.wikimedia.org/ (except the image of the toad, which is the logo for Toad's school of driving)
