Safe Speed Forums

I'm not at all sure what the advice should be. It's particularly hard since we have decades of confusion behind us. With spiral markings, a signal to change lane is typically more important than a signal to stay on or exit, and that simply adds to the confusion.

Personally I take a dynamic approach and give a signal if I think it will help other particular road users, but I think that's too subtle for the Highway Code.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

i quite like spiral marked roundabouts..... but not all are... and some still leave you in the wrong lanes.... and some have the signs & the markings mismatched..... its pretty hideous really.

on a well marked spiral roundabout i only signal if i'm intending on crossing one of the markings (which if i'm in the correct lane i don't have to) but it does require some careful positioning to make sure you are obvious and not alongside anyone at the crucial point.

mind you there's one roundabout near here where you have to use a completely different line depending on whether there's someone in the far right lane or not

do you drive a beamer, Peter?

/flippant. Seriously, if there is a car waiting to join the roundabout - or approaching to do so from an exit I want to pass, I will invariably flick the right indicator on to (attempt to) leave the joiner in no doubt of my trajectory - across where he wants to come from. I'll still be ready for his misjudgement though, if necessary going off early.

It really does depend on lay-out .. your COAST skills , common sense

RoadCraft offers a little more help. Using COA - identify the hazards - scanning to the limit point, to the left and right. Use MIRORRS (all three and consider an over the shoulder for that "idiot" on two wheels (who could just be me as I do ride me bike and me motor bike as well as drive me cars! ).

You know which exit you want - so if turning left .keep in the inside lane and if turning taking an exit to the right then perhaps wise to choose the outer lane.. or L3/4 if one of those compicated efforts which require a lote of PSL/MSM/COAST and courteous negotiation on the part of all

I think this "courtesy" is important .. I twin it with Concentration in COAST - just as I twin A for ATTITUDE - part of our "acid lecture service" and - we do not dish out fines all the tiem either. It should be a last resort or "no choice but .. given what we saw the person do and whether we show our fangs or not - I think we should at least try to make the person understand why we take our stand and offer constructive advice... but I also think we should offer benefit of the training the public kindly paid for with courtesy and a genuine constuctive and positive criticism. It really defeats the objective of attempting to identify and get the driver to learn positively from a hard lesson if we do the "holier than thou - bossy prefect .. whatever routine which people out there can and will resent. I do think our team here behave professionally on the whole - and can only hope the negatives I do read on-line and in the press are exaggerated "bad day affairs"

But back to the topic .

Once you have decided exit... based on the COA sweep of the road and lay-out ahead . you plan your accordingly.

You lose the speed smoothly .. and your speed of approach will be planned and decided by your COA - view of the roundabout and traffic already on it.. you plan to sopt but should be also ready to go!

Your gear choice depends on your COA of the traffic conditions

Consider whether or not to signal - and this does depend very much on the courteous requirement to let other road users know what you intend to do so that they can plan accordingly.

Your COA should alert you to traffic already on the roundabout and approaching cars from other exits

You should be prepared to stop .. but ready and looking for opportunity to go .

When on the roundabout .. you blend into the traffic already there without disrupting it. In other words .. you look to match the speeds on the system. Keep COAST-ing whilst on the roundabout.

You know your exit .. so you use your nearside mirror and centra with a split second darting glance on the offiside one l to check it's safe to move into L1 if you have to - dependent on the markings and rather confusing paints on the tarmac at times . Then you enter the road you want and accelerate smoothly away.

But yes some roundabouts need extreme care and the Highway Code advice is helpful as a "rule of thumb" - and where - for the benefit of my lovely cousin Wildy who posted about it being viewd as "jsut a code at times" a court may sometimes take the view of "code" unless designated as a MUST per the ROAD TRAFFIC ACT 1988

But Rule 162 is still a good place to start. It's where the this advice meets complex roundabout from hell that we can run into problems. Common sense, human intelligence and decent human courtesy and maybe subconscious COAST applications usually see us through these complex roundabouts safely 95% of the time

I congratulate Johnny for his comment and will agree that only a first class A star grade numpty could reply to him per his OP here .

Roundabouts should not pose much problem .. but I am reminded of Papuamau who per Marianna who posts at intervals to his site says he is a really lovely and sensible chap (and he did agree with me of course at the time )

As I recall he wanted no roundabouts at all but cross roads with a BiB orchestrating the traffic like the conductor at the Last Night of the Proms"

I think I admitted to causing absolute chaos as a raw green shoot of a young officer once.. (I caused aboslute gridlock. in the middle of London I do not honestly know what I did wrong to this day... but somehow drivers misinterpreted me .... and I had an embarrassingly awful problem to deal with .. and am still thankful and grateful to my colleagues and guv at the time for bailing me out of a msichief there and if anyone reading was held up in the West End of London in the early 80s because of a numpty rooky directing traffic after a power cut .. I am truly sorry!

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Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

The problem with spiral roundabouts is that they seem to be totally ignored by the older generation who have been using the roundabout for a long time previously (I don't mean to come across as ageist here, it's just been my observation)

What happens is that a traditional roundabout will get upgraded to a spiral and a significant contingent of people will just treat it as if it's never changed.

I can't count the number of times I've had people in L3 (right turn towards the gyratory) of the blue leanie roundabout in Aylesbury try to go straight ahead, ignoring the fact that I'm in L2 (straight ahead or right) going right, or the number of people in L3 who fail to realise that that exit now has two lanes and thus change from L3 to L2 when exiting the roundabout, again ignoring the fact that there are other cars there.

Both of these problems are solved by negotiating the roundabout twice as fast as the person alongside you


It's quite frustrating as I really like the idea of spiral roundabouts, but then you have things like M53 J4 which was upgraded to a spiral and then downgraded again because the locals just didn't get it.

Or they were just brought up to negotiate roundabouts properly?

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Pecunia Prius Equitas et Salus

Very sensibly too.

This all boils down to: Why give off no information to other drivers when you could easily give off some that could not be misinterpreted?

Whatever 'The Highway Code' has to say, giving other road users information about your intentions is always going to be the safest course of action.

Agreed, road position and indicators, some people just seem to be very bad at it.

You seem to get the drivers that telegraph their intentions deliberately and correctly allowing you to be pretty sure where they are going. Then you get the drivers that know where they are going but cannot be bothered to make an effort to tell anyone else, you can often read them anyway. There are the drivers who helpfully indicate then go in a completely different direction, these are tricky but they know where they want to go so can often be predictable. The scariest drivers are the ones who do not seem to have any idea where they are going themselves and make apparently random direction/speed changes, just best to give them a wide berth.

The trick is to decide which camp they fall into early enough - that I am still trying to perfect...



*cough* guilty mlord - just not very often

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

It depends on if the idiot sense has been triggered, I guess. For example if I'm in L2 and the car in L1 is a taxi I know with 90% certanity that the taxi will be in L2 by the time we're level with the central island, so I make sure I'm ahead of the taxi before that happens.

I have seen (in my rear view mirror) a near miss where the L1 and L3 cars both drove straight for the same straight ahead exit point. I felt vindicated

Can I ust re-itierate that there is nothing wrong with the roundabout, it is a well designed spiral and is well signed with clear, recently painted, road markings.