Roundabout lanes

[Benjy911]

I was discussing this with a friend and he seems to think that I should be in the left lane here. Now admittedly I would be if it was empty, but I thought it was acceptable to take the right hand lane as well? Especially as there was a nice gap to slide into!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yrEkw37jiQ

Any thoughts on this?

[Benjy911]

kaf said:

Difficult to see the exact position of other traffic from the vid, but as it looks:

The silver car on your left might well be inconvenienced by your using the right lane to effectively overtake on the roundabout. You run the risk of both of you going for the same bit of road on the exit.

By taking the roundabout like that you have put yourself in the difficult position of being alongside him, if he cuts the roundabout you have no escape route.

It is never a good idea to 'voluntarily' put yourself alongside another vehicle on a roundabout because of this, keeping an offset is safer.

It may be of course that you cleared him fully before entering the roundabout in which case your route would be ok as long as you are able to keep suitable clearance ahead of him.

Yes, by the time I'd got parallel to the island on the first exit I'd easily cleared the BMW, the only reason I stayed left slightly was to show I wasn't trying to cut them up/slow them down and to get a clear view away from the roundabout. If they had stuck right behind the Saxo I would have hung back to avoid being stuck along side.

It's a bit of a difficult roundabout especially during rush hour, as the majority of stuff coming in the direction I came from takes the first exit, which is why I usually take the right hand lane to try and ease the congestion. Unless of course no one is indicating left and the traffic is all bunched up.

[Benjy911]

Yep, looking back I should have gone out wider to get past. I'll blame it on the fact my previous Corsa was only a 1.2 and I wanted to spend as little time on the other side of the road as possible! However, the advice has been listened to and in future I'll make sure when it is totally clear to pass wider to avoid any potential situations.

[Benjy911]

The opportunity was there to overtake without impeding on the other driver's progress, so I thought I may as well take it.

[Benjy911]

It certainly seems a very debatable topic, even if the hc does indeed say the left hand lane is for exiting left and straight on. I knew I'd read something about it before, I just had a look in my Haynes "Learn to Drive" book! and it says: "It is also acceptable to use the right-hand lane when going straight ahead if the left-hand lane of the roundabout is blocked, for instance by vehicles turning left."

In the video you can see that I've tried to make the BMW driver fully aware that I'm there, which is why I tried to get in line with them before they crossed the line to enter the roundabout, so that if they do take objection, I can carry on round to avoid confrontation. I also hung back from the Saxo in case it decided it wanted to take the 3rd exit!

Also I wasn't trying to suggest this as advanced driving by any means, I've only been driving 2 years my self. I just thought this was the most appropriate area of the forum to get a well rounded opinion on the matter, which has been achieved.

In future I will stick to the left hand lane to be on the safe side, as I don't want to cause unnecessary problems. I guess driving a slower car previously has encouraged me to try and sneak past stuff without the use of speed!

Thanks