The Magic Roundabout

I witnessed a miracle last month – rolling gently along some top-class swoopy West Midlands tarmac, I happened upon a large roundabout joining two A-roads that was in the midst of a do-over. Freshly laid tarmac glistening in the low autumnal sunlight, no one had yet had a chance to lay a brush to the unmarred surface. And would you believe it, even without all those tramlines and idiot arrows pointing the way, everyone was negotiating said roundabout in a civilised, ordered manner. I’d even bet things were running more smoothly than normal. I went round it twice, I was that happy. 

This creeping menace of road surface signage offends me. Back when I learnt to drive a car, you were taught how to negotiate roundabouts – if you’re going left or straight ahead, go in the left-hand lane, right-hand lane for turning right, and use your indicators for the benefit of other road users. Everyone followed the same rules, and as a consequence, at least through my rose-tinted specs, roundabouts in the old days used to be a kharmic pleasure zone, where all road users were united and co-operative in their methods of negotiating traffic islands, allowing traffic to flow freely and the universe to roll more easily on its cosmic path. 

Nowadays it seems every road authority has gone to insane lengths to take away any suggestion that you need to find your own way round the things, to mark and measure every inch of tarmac, big angry white arrows dictating your every move. It’s not just roundabouts, of course, and it’s not just the paint on the road that’s annoying at roundabouts – nowadays they frequently have traffic lights on them, at least round by me, and even traffic islands separating and shepherding the traffic around them (now that’s REALLY annoying). And while I have no figures to say whether heavily marked roundabouts or those with no markings are the most efficient means of keeping the traffic flowing, one thing I CAN tell you with assurance is that unmarked roundabouts are a heck of a lot less stressful to navigate. 

Take Lydiate Ash. It’s a junction I used to negotiate daily, the M5 bouncing off the A38 into Birmingham, along with an A-road in the direction of Stourbridge and the retail soul vacuum of Merry Hill. It’s also got traffic lights all the way round it and the local road painters have done more lines than Michael Barrymore. The upshot of this is that there is almost no chance of you negotiating it without having to stop at some point, and only then if you plan on exiting it at the first opportunity – if you’re traversing a few exits, you’re going to get stopped.  No ifs, no buts – you are going to stop.  

Now, in terms of the amount of time it’s going to take you to get round it, the lights probably don’t make such a big difference. Where the problem starts is when you get more than one vehicle, and specifically more than one vehicle going in the same direction. Because inevitably, what you’re going to end up having at some level is a race, and as much as the namby-pamby H&S nanny state wants no one to have to suffer the frustration of not winning, life will occasionally hand you a losing card. Losing the traffic light GP isn’t the issue, and that’s not a problem, it happens to us all from time to time. No, the problem comes when you get people lining up alongside you in a shorter queue aiming towards the same exit, hoping to jump ahead by using the wrong lane and beating you away from the lights – that’s annoying. 

Alongside that, you have the trials and tribulations of those who aren’t too sure where they’re going. Back in the day, if you were hesitant about which exit to take, you could circulate until you were sure, then filter in with the rest of a placid and easy-going automotivated nation, but in the 21^st century, you have to run the gauntlet of one or more lanes of irate motorists who all think you’re trying to steal a march and jump in front of them. Without actually timing the lights to hold you as long as possible, it’s hard to imagine anything more able to cause the greatest frustration to the largest number of people. But then, I sometimes think that that IS the role of our elected officials – it’s certainly what they seem to do best. 

Paul Harris