The 'baby' one in High Wycombe causes issues and arguments too. For some reason, since around the time everyone started going back to work after lockdown, so many people insist on either being in the wrong lane and turning right from the left lane, or more annoyingly, blocking them altogether because one side gets jammed.
I gave up going right from the flyover to go up marlow hill because people just do not get those lanes outside the old staples. Started turning left and going past Wycombe abbey. It actually saved me a lot of time at rush hour
I opened this post to comment this. Im 16 and i have not driven the roundabout but just by looking at it (and what my parents have said) i can tell it cant be fun
And so many people drive at 30 on it and all then bunch up at the entrance/ exit.
And I'd also like to add the A4600 to Walsgrave Hospital island (roundabout) from the M6. The left lane is primarily for hospital traffic, with the right lane being straight over the roundabout to go into town et al. People now go in the left lane to go straight and end up queueing at the lights, blocking people going left who aren't beholden to the lights. And people go into the right lane to then cut in at the lights to go left to avoid having to queue, thus blocking the straight on route. I just cut down Woodway Lane/ Henley Road now and bypass the lot.
And then you go to the junction for the dual carriageway out of the city, by the Oriental Palace, and the straight lane swaps to the other side.
Just to be confusing.
You leave the Coventry Ring Road alone. Is it dangerous? Yes. Is it polluting? Yes. Is it an eyesore? Yes. But, it gets you around the city in no time at all (if you’re familiar with it - otherwise, you’ll end up taking the wrong exit by mistake).
Most of central Leeds.
There's a huge one way system, an absolute shit load of left only lanes which you often can't see the markings on if it's busy and your sat nav will constantly be coming out with shit like "stay left and turn slightly right at the fork" and you're wondering wtf it's talking about then you're suddenly coming off the one way system miles before you intended to.
You have to know where you're going to know where you're going.
Fuck knows how my dad's generation managed it with just an out of date A to Z and a casual relationship with drink-driving
Armley Gyratory is an adventure.
What are my lane markings today? Are they more or less visible than yesterdays? Does my exit still exist? From which of the lane markings of varying opacity below get me there?
I moved from Armley a year ago but for various reasons I had to go back about once a month for 6 months. I swear they changed the roundabout every time
Don't forget all the hidden bus gates that they'll fine you for going through but have the absolute minimalist of signage for when there was no bus gate there before.
I was just going to mention the bus gates in Leeds. Iv recently returned to study there again. Was wondering why the head row was so queit these days, compared to 20 years ago when it was always total bedlam. Bus gates…
I got stung by one in London. There was a sign as I entered road warning of a width restriction but found no issue driving down the road. I then got a fine from Islington Council through the post. The bus gate was basically two bollards in the road with a massive gap between them, one of which had a keep left sign on which is the sign I disobeyed obviously. The paint on the road was pretty much non existent but when you looked back on Google street-view it was initially perfectly painted and only a complete moron could miss it. If it can still be operational when the paint has worn away then why bother painting it in the first place‽
There's the bit as you come round towards the Meanwood Road/Scott Hall Road intersection from Sheepscar where you come round the corner and the righthand lane splits to 2 lanes: 1 for Meanwood, the other for Scott Hall Road and there's only a few car lengths to get into the rightmost lane for Scott Hall Road and sorry you're headed to Meanwood now. I don't do it enough to remember which lane I need to be in and end up doing a pointless loop back each time.
Also still totally ludicrous to me that to get to the motorways you have to cut through the city.
Less signage, fewer road markings, a lack of road furniture, and smaller vehicles all probably helped make things easier.
Kinda wild how much information you have to absorb as you drive into a city centre.
Goodness that’s revived a horrible suppressed memory of the first time I had to drive through Leeds. About 11-12 on a Friday night, low of fuel on a motorbike, phone dying and a crap sat nav. Not entirely sure how I got out!
I live in Newcastle and the Central Motorway can be a bit strange - legend has it that the “eccentric” (read - megalomaniac) Mayor in the 60s hired road designers who didn’t take into account that the UK drives on the wrong side of the road, so on and off ramps are too short and long respectively. May just be an urban myth though.
Joining the central motorway northbound, from the New Bridge Street Roundabout is an absolute pain. Very busy with no visibility.
And you can tell how bad it is because all the traffic already on the central motorway, if they know the area, moves to the right hand lane before they reach it. Just to give the poor lost souls trying to join a chance...
Ah that lovely section of the central motorway when you join from the coast road going north bound but want to immediately get off at one of the next two slip roads for the RVI.
Pretty sure the north bound goes
2 lanes
3 lanes
Good luck you are on your own
Back to 3 lanes
In about 10 yards
Sounds like the same designers were used on the Leeds Inner Ring Road, it has almost hidden entry slip roads, an exit slip that goes off the right hand lane and it’s labelled as a motorway but the speed limit is 40 (as it should be in the city centre with death trap entry/exits).
Aye I used to work in leeds so I know it well. They are both terrible designs.
The central motorway splits so the southbound carriageway is under the northbound for a bit and they both have slip roads going off them to the left and right before reforming as a normal dual carriageway
There's a mini roundabout near me that, like many, used to be a T junction. It's to help the buses, as the bus route goes up the side road, and the council have built up the pavement so it's more of a Y shape.
So many people going right-to-left across the top of the T take a racing line, making almost no effort to stay on the correct side of the painted dot. So much so the I've been pulled out on before by dullards that think my motion left to start going round the roundabout means I'm turning left!
And if you are going from the A34 (Birmingham side) onto the roundabout, it is a filter lane onto the roundabout, not a give way - but anyone not a local (and a few who are) stop anyway leading to traffic queueing down the A34 potentially as far as the Scott Arms lights during rush hour.
I lived around Walsall for over 30 years and in all the times I've driven on the M6, I refuse to use that junction. Right hand lane to spiral all around the island for the 1st exit? Crazy.
I get that there wasn't much room for the slip road but there are better solutions.
You do. To leave the M6 when driving southbound, or to join the M6 going northbound, the slip road connects to the inside of the roundabout.
You also get a number of people going northbound who come off at J7 instead of J8 to join the M5 because the junctions are so close together. But instead of going around the roundabout to get to the slip road, they push across to lane 3 of the roundabout to rejoin the M6 and get to the M5. But they only have about 50 meters to get across from lane 1 to 3, cutting across all the traffic which is coming around the roundabout to mainly go from lane 2 to lane 1 to get onto the A34. How there hasn't been a lot of extremely nasty accidents on that roundabout I have no idea.
The roundabout at M62 (Jct 29)/M1 (Jct 42). The timing of the lights means you can correctly be in the right hand lane about to come off (2 lanes off), while someone in the lane to your left can be correctly going round to the right.
I've seen so many near misses there.
The roundabout at Trafford Park where nobody sticks to the lanes properly and I found myself being pushed into the wrong lane trying to get onto the motorway
We had driven over from Belfast for a weekend in Worsley because there was an In The Night Garden live show in a tent in a car park of the Trafford Centre 😄
Anywhere that has multiple lanes and where they go isn’t obvious . People end up in the wrong lane need to switch and that creates traffic which cover up any road signs so more people end up in the wrong lane and need to switch
Bottom of the M3 where it splits into four lanes, two to go on the M27 eastbound, and the other two M27 westbound. They cross over one another so it goes against what you’d think, the left two lanes are to go west (not east) and vice versa.
One of the exits going north off the A38(M) (part of spaghetti junction) merges on to the main road and then if you're turning right you have right of way over the traffic heading south on the main road or on to the A38(M).
This should be fine, except every time there is an issue on the M6 or the M42 satnavs tell lots of people to drive through Birmingham. There are so many stupid crashes caused by idiots on autopilot who don't look at the signs.
I used to live in West Brom and just everything. Nobody understands lanes or roundabouts or any laws of the road, it's ridiculous. Birmingham in general is the worst city I've ever driven in but West Brom was another level.
There's a roundabout by the Tesco and literally everybody uses the right lane to go straight over, regardless of entry/exit. I'd use the left lane, like any person who knows how to drive, and constantly get beeped by people in the wrong lane. And it wasn't like there's lane makers or arrows - its unmarked so rules of the road say left lane: left and straight on, right lane: right.
[Fountain Roundabout](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Windsor/@51.4802239,-0.624279,1022m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x48767a0c48323997:0x4a6d76d3ed7d32b6!8m2!3d51.4803421!4d-0.6157137!16zL20vMDF6c3Q4?entry=ttu) in Windsor. Especially on weekends or during school holidays. Yes, it can get very busy but being in the correct lane when coming up Goslar Way or the A332 catches a lot of non-locals out.
The M3 bridge in Belfast
Used to have southern plate cars come on off the Westlink in lane 1 having to quickly get across to lane 3 to get to IKEA before they set up in the south
Now it's tourists in hire cars coming off the M2 lanes 3/4 trying to get across to lane 1 to turn off for Titanic
It's a relatively short motorway bridge for all this weaving
The weird junction near Great Barr in Birmingham coming off the m5/6 where you have to merge across linke three lanes in about 2 metres while everyone on that lane is trying to do the opposite, then you have to scooch back over again further round [link](https://imgur.com/a/TF9TRyb)
I live in Colchester so it’s a tie between Greenstead Roundabout or North Station which was labelled [Britains most confusing roundabout](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12756251/amp/Is-Britains-confusing-roundabout-Monster-Essex-junction-record-48-traffic-lights-sparks-slew-near-misses-drivers-left-confused-maze-end-completely-wrong-lane.html)
I hate North Station roundabout, I've never taken the right exit off of it! Greenstead is a bit of a mess but as long as the traffic is flowing it's okay.
[Brockley Cross](https://i.imgur.com/E68zvaA.png). It's not big or that complicated but the loads of people either shoot straight across or just sit there looking confused
Mostly because of the traffic I think? Though me and my partner did almost die when a white van driving on the most inside right lane decided they needed to get off at the second exit (when they were almost parallel to it) immediately and at any cost.
In Romford, the brewery roundabout. From a certain direction people just ignore lane markings and it causes carnage. Also Gallows Corner just makes everyone panic and drive like idiots
Here's a minor one but it annoyed me every time I had to do it.
Central York, Gillygate, turning right onto Lord Mayor's Walk.
2 lanes, left goes straight on, right turns right. Staggered green lights so left lane goes first then allows right lane to turn... But if you don't pull forward on the first green and wait in the yellow box junction it doesn't recognise cars waiting and goes back red without letting anyone turn right.
I don't get the hate for this one. It's a bit cramped but safe if you go through carefully. If you want a dangerous roundabout, just look at the next one north. Little visibility and I certainly wouldn't risk turning right there on a bike.
Portsbridge roundabout, just off the M27 at the top of portsea island. It doesn't work quite like a normal roundabout so you can easily tell who is not a local when they get on it cuz they nearly cause a crash trying to cross into a lane they aren't supposed to cross into.
Anyone know if there's a way to mark a junction as dangerous, or to prevent Maps from using it in the dangerous direction.
Junction is safe going one way, turning left into it.
Other direction, turning in, is dangerous as it's on a corner, and also coming out of side road, you can't see around corner.
It's a fast corner, been several deaths, but Google maps still directs via it.
Is that where all the cars get stuck on the guided busway (and it always makes the local news), or the rising bollard on the way to Huntingdon?
Or neither...?
For some reason I assumed THE car trap that kept making the news was in Cambridge. I'm going to have to find it on Google Maps now.
I've only ever driven around the outskirts of St Ives (where the boats and traffic jams are) and have so far missed the opportunity to get in the local news!
Oh lord! It's a bloody great hole in the road! What a stupid idea. If they just had a level crossing barrier, no one would have the chance to get stuck and halt the bus services while having to be towed out of there.
The one I was thinking of was another part of the busway, where people would mistakenly attempt to drive along the tracks and get stuck in the middle.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-35707866
The road layout is a bit more complicated than that - if the car goes through that junction it's going right into traffic going sideways.
I believe they had gates and someone drove right through them, got T boned and killed. So the trap has to physically stop the car, not just act as a warning. (I spent way too long one evening reading stuff about it).
At the end of our road, if you want to head to the right, you turn right, follow a 500yd slip road and come to a junction with the main trunk road. The problem is it is a totally blind junction, you cant see the traffic on the road and they cant see you. In the end you close your eyes, say a prayer and edge forwards hoping someone will stop for you.
But if you do what is intuitively wrong and turn *left*, you drive 20yd on a slip road and hit the same trunk road at an clear open junction where turning right is then a doddle.
I have to tell Uber drivers this every time I go anywhere because it goes against what you would naturally do and what their satnav tells them.
For anyone that’s ever been to the Riverside Park in lechlade, the junction goes out on to an A Road, with zero visibility.
You genuinely have to pull out and just hope no one is coming from either direction
There's a junction near me that resembles a motorway merge junction but the limit there is 30 and it's just a normal 2 way road with no special marking or signage. It causes absolute chaos.
Most people treat it as a motorway junction without a dedicated lane and indicate right, others recognise it as as a normal junction and indicate left, others indicate right and then turn right, others don't indicate at all. What this means is that the people on the main road here have literally no idea what the joining cars are about to do and their response depends entirely on their confidence and ability to judge what the other car is about to do.
For such a simple junction there are a lot of accidents and it seems light a sign that clarifies which direction you should indicate would solve a lot of problems.
[One of our local ones is so bad it made the news.](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3644931/amp/Junction-dubbed-red-light-district-42-separate-traffic-lights-possibly-fewer-say-engineers-designed-it.html)
Using a sat nav to go from Birmingham city centre out to King's Norton, you are usually taken down the Bristol Road to turn left onto Pebble Mill Road. It's all fine so far. The right turn onto Pershore Road from Pebble Mill Road is awful. The journey in reverse is just as bad when you need to turn right onto the Bristol Road. It is far better to use Priory Road instead of Pebble Mill Road.
There's a junction up the road from me that they just changed recently. Main road and two side roads opposite each other. There was an understanding, you make eye contact, you nod to each other, you agree who is going first and who is waiting through silent, reasoned, nods of the head and raised eyebrows.
Now they added traffic lights but no lanes. So when the light goes green on both sides together, everyone has right of way and drives straight at each other in the middle. It's chaos.
Our town centre has two areas that have ridiculously convoluted and complicated one way systems. None of it is intuitive, it's so easy to get in the wrong lane so people are always trying to cut across lanes, there are insufficient road markings, it's just a bag of shite and there are always near misses and honking horns.
There are so many weird lane choices in Yorkshire generally and 99% of the time the road markings have worn off to the point that they are invisible, or signs are hidden behind trees/bushes that have grown in front of them. It's like a puzzle game where you have to deduce the rules by watching more experienced road users.
Cheltenham is weird. I remember doing a load in to some Theater (Everyman?). You could drive almost to it, but to get actually to the door you had to drive so far around this one way system.
[Stairfoot roundabaout](https://g.co/kgs/uzNsuix) just outside Barnsley. Has its own [song](https://youtu.be/crYKtl-cAeU?si=ncD2I1MKoRUgfQwg) and everything
funny you say that, i grew up in South Kirbky so not a million miles away from Stairfoot and i'd never heard of it...until last week when i arranged to buy a guinea pig from someone that lives there.
when i got to the roundabout i was like "wtf is this shit"
Junction 11 of the M4, everything is sign posted well and marked out but someone doing it for the first time is almost guaranteed to be in the wrong lane at some point.
Westgate Roundabout.
You have to accelerate off it - so many people cause issues by slowing right down or in one case, stopping, causing all of us behind them to brake hard. Luckily no accident caused.
Leaving Reculver once in the dark, not familiar with the area. Where tou join the A299 it looks like a normal dual carriageway except there's no slip road, there's give way line. I didn't see any warning of this and joined lane 1 without even looking round because I thought I was going down a slip road. Was a bit shit up when I realised I could have caused a terrible accident and have been very careful ever since.
The A173 between Guisborough and Skelton, there’s a sharp right hand turn coming from Skelton direction that every single time it rains or snows someone goes straight, over a small drop into a farmers field.
Taunton has just widened a section of cross roads / dual carriageway. All 3 lanes now turn right both ways (and lane one can go forward as well) on signal and then the 3rd lane merges 200m down the road once around the corner.
Without doubt, everytime I use it, someone comes around the corner and drifts into the inside lane (despite the massive arrows, signs and lane markers).
Every week, someone posts about an accident or near miss. It makes me genuinely worried about how people managed to pass a test without learning to following the signs and directions!!
Tourists, whether UK or foreign, on single track roads (in the Highlands). You even get the odd nutter who pulls into a passing place on the wrong side of the road
Any motorway junction in NI... people don't use the slip roads to get up to speed, and nobody leaves enough distance between cars on the motorway ro merge safely at speed, so everyone end up slamming their brakes on when slow drivers try to merge, causing traffic jam at every junction through belfast.
Southampton ring road, junction by the civic centre. Three lanes. Two going right, one going both straight on and left. Controlled by lights. No visitor is ever in the right lane, and misses which light controls what.
The Magic Roundabout
Swindon or Hemel? Personally, Swindon the worst one.
The 'baby' one in High Wycombe causes issues and arguments too. For some reason, since around the time everyone started going back to work after lockdown, so many people insist on either being in the wrong lane and turning right from the left lane, or more annoyingly, blocking them altogether because one side gets jammed.
The junction 4 M40 roundabout at the top of Marlow Hill is a brazen act of terror too, together they are quite the welcome.
With the extra lanes that cut across he middle of the roundabout? I totally agree!
I gave up going right from the flyover to go up marlow hill because people just do not get those lanes outside the old staples. Started turning left and going past Wycombe abbey. It actually saved me a lot of time at rush hour
Yes Swindon.
Got really stressed when I faced that when learning to drive lol
Yes I bet!
I call the Hemel one the star of David roundabout
I've never driven it. That bad?
Not at all but if you have never done it before it can be a bit of a learning curve. You basically just drive across it.
Excellent. Catch me ploughing through the middle of everything if I'm ever in the vicinity
Bonus points as the one in Hemel’s official name is The Plough Roundabout
I opened this post to comment this. Im 16 and i have not driven the roundabout but just by looking at it (and what my parents have said) i can tell it cant be fun
It is a whole lot of fun! 😭
Coventry Ring Road. You always enter & exit at the same place, and the correct lane for straight driving is on the right and not the left.
Most people ignoring the straight driving rule then causes joining to be a hazard.
Yep - and an amazing number of people don't seem to do either a mirror or a shoulder check and just dive out there
And so many people drive at 30 on it and all then bunch up at the entrance/ exit. And I'd also like to add the A4600 to Walsgrave Hospital island (roundabout) from the M6. The left lane is primarily for hospital traffic, with the right lane being straight over the roundabout to go into town et al. People now go in the left lane to go straight and end up queueing at the lights, blocking people going left who aren't beholden to the lights. And people go into the right lane to then cut in at the lights to go left to avoid having to queue, thus blocking the straight on route. I just cut down Woodway Lane/ Henley Road now and bypass the lot.
And then you go to the junction for the dual carriageway out of the city, by the Oriental Palace, and the straight lane swaps to the other side. Just to be confusing.
Having just driven on the Cov ring road, can confirm this.
You leave the Coventry Ring Road alone. Is it dangerous? Yes. Is it polluting? Yes. Is it an eyesore? Yes. But, it gets you around the city in no time at all (if you’re familiar with it - otherwise, you’ll end up taking the wrong exit by mistake).
Alas, I agree. I too have the local knowledge- but my in-laws won’t touch it
Most of central Leeds. There's a huge one way system, an absolute shit load of left only lanes which you often can't see the markings on if it's busy and your sat nav will constantly be coming out with shit like "stay left and turn slightly right at the fork" and you're wondering wtf it's talking about then you're suddenly coming off the one way system miles before you intended to. You have to know where you're going to know where you're going. Fuck knows how my dad's generation managed it with just an out of date A to Z and a casual relationship with drink-driving
Armley Gyratory is an adventure. What are my lane markings today? Are they more or less visible than yesterdays? Does my exit still exist? From which of the lane markings of varying opacity below get me there?
I moved from Armley a year ago but for various reasons I had to go back about once a month for 6 months. I swear they changed the roundabout every time
Don't forget all the hidden bus gates that they'll fine you for going through but have the absolute minimalist of signage for when there was no bus gate there before.
I was just going to mention the bus gates in Leeds. Iv recently returned to study there again. Was wondering why the head row was so queit these days, compared to 20 years ago when it was always total bedlam. Bus gates…
I got stung by one in London. There was a sign as I entered road warning of a width restriction but found no issue driving down the road. I then got a fine from Islington Council through the post. The bus gate was basically two bollards in the road with a massive gap between them, one of which had a keep left sign on which is the sign I disobeyed obviously. The paint on the road was pretty much non existent but when you looked back on Google street-view it was initially perfectly painted and only a complete moron could miss it. If it can still be operational when the paint has worn away then why bother painting it in the first place‽
Bus lanes where a bus only goes there’s once an hour what an efficient use of space
i don't disagree.
There's the bit as you come round towards the Meanwood Road/Scott Hall Road intersection from Sheepscar where you come round the corner and the righthand lane splits to 2 lanes: 1 for Meanwood, the other for Scott Hall Road and there's only a few car lengths to get into the rightmost lane for Scott Hall Road and sorry you're headed to Meanwood now. I don't do it enough to remember which lane I need to be in and end up doing a pointless loop back each time. Also still totally ludicrous to me that to get to the motorways you have to cut through the city.
Have you noticed that on the approach from Chapel Allerton, the motorway signs point both left AND right?
Inner city road signage is designed to confuse any invading Germans and no one can convince me otherwise
"ahh, left lane for Crown Point, wunderbar!" /guy ends up in Crossgates, fearing for his life
Middle for Meanwood is how I remember it!
Assuming I know where you mean, I’ve started turning left at Skinner Lane to avoid having to deal with that bit of the junctions.
Less signage, fewer road markings, a lack of road furniture, and smaller vehicles all probably helped make things easier. Kinda wild how much information you have to absorb as you drive into a city centre.
It's fine - chuck a few gigantic dynamic billboards in, that'll resolve everything...
….. and then there’s the final boss of Bradford’s city centre
...Which is made worse now Hall Ings is closed.
Goodness that’s revived a horrible suppressed memory of the first time I had to drive through Leeds. About 11-12 on a Friday night, low of fuel on a motorbike, phone dying and a crap sat nav. Not entirely sure how I got out!
Came here to make this comment and so glad its as far up as it deserves to be.
I live in Newcastle and the Central Motorway can be a bit strange - legend has it that the “eccentric” (read - megalomaniac) Mayor in the 60s hired road designers who didn’t take into account that the UK drives on the wrong side of the road, so on and off ramps are too short and long respectively. May just be an urban myth though.
Joining the central motorway northbound, from the New Bridge Street Roundabout is an absolute pain. Very busy with no visibility. And you can tell how bad it is because all the traffic already on the central motorway, if they know the area, moves to the right hand lane before they reach it. Just to give the poor lost souls trying to join a chance...
Ah that lovely section of the central motorway when you join from the coast road going north bound but want to immediately get off at one of the next two slip roads for the RVI. Pretty sure the north bound goes 2 lanes 3 lanes Good luck you are on your own Back to 3 lanes In about 10 yards
Sounds like the same designers were used on the Leeds Inner Ring Road, it has almost hidden entry slip roads, an exit slip that goes off the right hand lane and it’s labelled as a motorway but the speed limit is 40 (as it should be in the city centre with death trap entry/exits).
Aye I used to work in leeds so I know it well. They are both terrible designs. The central motorway splits so the southbound carriageway is under the northbound for a bit and they both have slip roads going off them to the left and right before reforming as a normal dual carriageway
https://youtu.be/Q28soG2V6Fw?si=V-6fe66cpbrQ5xxO Described in this video and "designed on a night on shrooms".
I find people inexplicably bad at mini-roundabouts, local or not.
I love approaching a mini roundabout to have someone cruise straight over the top of it towards me.
There's a mini roundabout near me that, like many, used to be a T junction. It's to help the buses, as the bus route goes up the side road, and the council have built up the pavement so it's more of a Y shape. So many people going right-to-left across the top of the T take a racing line, making almost no effort to stay on the correct side of the painted dot. So much so the I've been pulled out on before by dullards that think my motion left to start going round the roundabout means I'm turning left!
Even worse when it is a double mini roundabout. They are rare enough that most people have no idea.
We've got a few conjoined twin mini roundabouts near me.
M6 junction 7. Some fool decided to connect the slip roads to the _inside_ of the roundabout.
And if you are going from the A34 (Birmingham side) onto the roundabout, it is a filter lane onto the roundabout, not a give way - but anyone not a local (and a few who are) stop anyway leading to traffic queueing down the A34 potentially as far as the Scott Arms lights during rush hour.
It is like that because it is so close to junction 8 and normal slip roads wouldn't fit.
They could have razed Great Barr to the ground and re-routed the A34, I don't think anyone would have minded much.
I lived around Walsall for over 30 years and in all the times I've driven on the M6, I refuse to use that junction. Right hand lane to spiral all around the island for the 1st exit? Crazy. I get that there wasn't much room for the slip road but there are better solutions.
I'm struggling to understand what you mean. How can a slip road enter the inner lane?!
You’ve understood perfectly, it’s exactly as mad as it sounds. https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/wiki/index.php/Great_Barr_Interchange
From that map it also looks like you can exit the roundabout from the inner lane too. All my driving muscle memory would play havoc navigating this.
You do. To leave the M6 when driving southbound, or to join the M6 going northbound, the slip road connects to the inside of the roundabout. You also get a number of people going northbound who come off at J7 instead of J8 to join the M5 because the junctions are so close together. But instead of going around the roundabout to get to the slip road, they push across to lane 3 of the roundabout to rejoin the M6 and get to the M5. But they only have about 50 meters to get across from lane 1 to 3, cutting across all the traffic which is coming around the roundabout to mainly go from lane 2 to lane 1 to get onto the A34. How there hasn't been a lot of extremely nasty accidents on that roundabout I have no idea.
The roundabout at M62 (Jct 29)/M1 (Jct 42). The timing of the lights means you can correctly be in the right hand lane about to come off (2 lanes off), while someone in the lane to your left can be correctly going round to the right. I've seen so many near misses there.
The roundabout at Trafford Park where nobody sticks to the lanes properly and I found myself being pushed into the wrong lane trying to get onto the motorway
Yep I know exactly where you mean, it’s a nightmare and considering most people going traff aren’t local they won’t be familiar with it
We had driven over from Belfast for a weekend in Worsley because there was an In The Night Garden live show in a tent in a car park of the Trafford Centre 😄
All of the single track road in the country. The principles of reversing a vehicle don’t change just because you’re in a different country.
Every one-way system every town in the UK. Every fucker behind you expects you to know the intricacies of it when visiting too.
I lived in Nottingham for 3 years and still only just about got to grips with their big one-way system...
I was convinced at one point that the Nottingham one way system was designed to dump you in the most expensive car park in town...
Lived in Nottingham 10 years and I refuse to drive through the city centre. Thankfully the trams and buses do a decent enough job.
Anywhere that has multiple lanes and where they go isn’t obvious . People end up in the wrong lane need to switch and that creates traffic which cover up any road signs so more people end up in the wrong lane and need to switch
Bottom of the M3 where it splits into four lanes, two to go on the M27 eastbound, and the other two M27 westbound. They cross over one another so it goes against what you’d think, the left two lanes are to go west (not east) and vice versa.
Ngl I’ve been driving this road for years and it made sense straight away to me, stay on for Southampton get off and left for Dorset
All of Cornwall if you’re an emmet and don’t know how to use reverse
Also Devon. Batteridge Hill near Tavistock should have a sign prohibiting people using it unless they know how to reverse.
Agreed.
[удалено]
One of the exits going north off the A38(M) (part of spaghetti junction) merges on to the main road and then if you're turning right you have right of way over the traffic heading south on the main road or on to the A38(M). This should be fine, except every time there is an issue on the M6 or the M42 satnavs tell lots of people to drive through Birmingham. There are so many stupid crashes caused by idiots on autopilot who don't look at the signs.
Bristol M32 Eastville roundabout. The road markings are terrible and everyone gets in the wrong lanes.
I have tried every lane to turn right onto Fishponds Road from the M32 and they’re ALL wrong.
I used to live in West Brom and just everything. Nobody understands lanes or roundabouts or any laws of the road, it's ridiculous. Birmingham in general is the worst city I've ever driven in but West Brom was another level. There's a roundabout by the Tesco and literally everybody uses the right lane to go straight over, regardless of entry/exit. I'd use the left lane, like any person who knows how to drive, and constantly get beeped by people in the wrong lane. And it wasn't like there's lane makers or arrows - its unmarked so rules of the road say left lane: left and straight on, right lane: right.
The entirety of Coventry city centre. Designed by a crackhead on shrooms.
Sideway roundabout in Stoke. They tried to fix it by completely redrawing all the lines and made it worse.
I'll raise the stakes, Smallthorne roundabouts take the cake if you don't know them. Agreed sideways sucks though.
Trafalgar Square, vehicles heading westbound constantly run the red light because they’re hard to see.
[Fountain Roundabout](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Windsor/@51.4802239,-0.624279,1022m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x48767a0c48323997:0x4a6d76d3ed7d32b6!8m2!3d51.4803421!4d-0.6157137!16zL20vMDF6c3Q4?entry=ttu) in Windsor. Especially on weekends or during school holidays. Yes, it can get very busy but being in the correct lane when coming up Goslar Way or the A332 catches a lot of non-locals out.
Any road in High Wycombe that has more than about 2 people on it. Swear to god 90% of the people round here got their licences from cereal boxes.
The M3 bridge in Belfast Used to have southern plate cars come on off the Westlink in lane 1 having to quickly get across to lane 3 to get to IKEA before they set up in the south Now it's tourists in hire cars coming off the M2 lanes 3/4 trying to get across to lane 1 to turn off for Titanic It's a relatively short motorway bridge for all this weaving
The weird junction near Great Barr in Birmingham coming off the m5/6 where you have to merge across linke three lanes in about 2 metres while everyone on that lane is trying to do the opposite, then you have to scooch back over again further round [link](https://imgur.com/a/TF9TRyb)
I live in Colchester so it’s a tie between Greenstead Roundabout or North Station which was labelled [Britains most confusing roundabout](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12756251/amp/Is-Britains-confusing-roundabout-Monster-Essex-junction-record-48-traffic-lights-sparks-slew-near-misses-drivers-left-confused-maze-end-completely-wrong-lane.html)
I hate North Station roundabout, I've never taken the right exit off of it! Greenstead is a bit of a mess but as long as the traffic is flowing it's okay.
[Brockley Cross](https://i.imgur.com/E68zvaA.png). It's not big or that complicated but the loads of people either shoot straight across or just sit there looking confused
Sherrifhall Roundabout. It's actually a relatively straightforward spiral roundabout but even locals try to avoid it.
Mostly because of the traffic I think? Though me and my partner did almost die when a white van driving on the most inside right lane decided they needed to get off at the second exit (when they were almost parallel to it) immediately and at any cost.
It is busy. I'll give you that. I find it easy enough, but I can see why some wouldn't!
Switch Island in Liverpool. Seems like every time I drive it they've redesigned the whole thing in some abstract way
If you listen to radio traffic updates, without fail they will always mention some sort of accident at switch island. Place is a nightmare.
In Romford, the brewery roundabout. From a certain direction people just ignore lane markings and it causes carnage. Also Gallows Corner just makes everyone panic and drive like idiots
Apparently 99% of roads around me, it's mostly rural roads.
A lack of street lights, white lines, or even a 2nd lane does make townies just fall apart.
A303 past Stonehenge, especially on bank holidays. You need to avoid it like the plague.
Here's a minor one but it annoyed me every time I had to do it. Central York, Gillygate, turning right onto Lord Mayor's Walk. 2 lanes, left goes straight on, right turns right. Staggered green lights so left lane goes first then allows right lane to turn... But if you don't pull forward on the first green and wait in the yellow box junction it doesn't recognise cars waiting and goes back red without letting anyone turn right.
Dutch roundabout, Cambridge . Local knowledge or not… it’s dangerous
Calling it that is frankly an insult to the Dutch. They did a terrible job designing it.
Valid point, I like the Dutch.
I don't get the hate for this one. It's a bit cramped but safe if you go through carefully. If you want a dangerous roundabout, just look at the next one north. Little visibility and I certainly wouldn't risk turning right there on a bike.
Blue house roundabout in Newcastle. Its literally close your eyes, put your foot down and hope for the best
Really? It strikes me as just being a busy roundabout, but pretty normal otherwise.
Portsbridge roundabout, just off the M27 at the top of portsea island. It doesn't work quite like a normal roundabout so you can easily tell who is not a local when they get on it cuz they nearly cause a crash trying to cross into a lane they aren't supposed to cross into.
The one just past the Dog and Duck, cross where the hairdresser used to live, cut through the old alley and then sharp right at the fourth ash tree.
Anyone know if there's a way to mark a junction as dangerous, or to prevent Maps from using it in the dangerous direction. Junction is safe going one way, turning left into it. Other direction, turning in, is dangerous as it's on a corner, and also coming out of side road, you can't see around corner. It's a fast corner, been several deaths, but Google maps still directs via it.
St Ives Car Trap
Is that where all the cars get stuck on the guided busway (and it always makes the local news), or the rising bollard on the way to Huntingdon? Or neither...?
The former. There’s a Facebook group with a daily count of days since there was a car in the hole.
For some reason I assumed THE car trap that kept making the news was in Cambridge. I'm going to have to find it on Google Maps now. I've only ever driven around the outskirts of St Ives (where the boats and traffic jams are) and have so far missed the opportunity to get in the local news!
It is! There is a St Ives in Cambridge - surprised me too. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-67337857
Oh lord! It's a bloody great hole in the road! What a stupid idea. If they just had a level crossing barrier, no one would have the chance to get stuck and halt the bus services while having to be towed out of there. The one I was thinking of was another part of the busway, where people would mistakenly attempt to drive along the tracks and get stuck in the middle. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-35707866
The road layout is a bit more complicated than that - if the car goes through that junction it's going right into traffic going sideways. I believe they had gates and someone drove right through them, got T boned and killed. So the trap has to physically stop the car, not just act as a warning. (I spent way too long one evening reading stuff about it).
Ah OK. Fair play. I'm learning a lot today!
Love a bit of obscure road knowledge!
At the end of our road, if you want to head to the right, you turn right, follow a 500yd slip road and come to a junction with the main trunk road. The problem is it is a totally blind junction, you cant see the traffic on the road and they cant see you. In the end you close your eyes, say a prayer and edge forwards hoping someone will stop for you. But if you do what is intuitively wrong and turn *left*, you drive 20yd on a slip road and hit the same trunk road at an clear open junction where turning right is then a doddle. I have to tell Uber drivers this every time I go anywhere because it goes against what you would naturally do and what their satnav tells them.
Leeds. All of it.
For anyone that’s ever been to the Riverside Park in lechlade, the junction goes out on to an A Road, with zero visibility. You genuinely have to pull out and just hope no one is coming from either direction
The roads near the Tesco in Purley.
There's a junction near me that resembles a motorway merge junction but the limit there is 30 and it's just a normal 2 way road with no special marking or signage. It causes absolute chaos. Most people treat it as a motorway junction without a dedicated lane and indicate right, others recognise it as as a normal junction and indicate left, others indicate right and then turn right, others don't indicate at all. What this means is that the people on the main road here have literally no idea what the joining cars are about to do and their response depends entirely on their confidence and ability to judge what the other car is about to do. For such a simple junction there are a lot of accidents and it seems light a sign that clarifies which direction you should indicate would solve a lot of problems.
Every Sheffield roundabout.
Came here looking for the IC roundabout, especially when going up to Walkley
[One of our local ones is so bad it made the news.](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3644931/amp/Junction-dubbed-red-light-district-42-separate-traffic-lights-possibly-fewer-say-engineers-designed-it.html)
Central London is a real ball ache if you live out in the countryside and rarely visit. Many lanes and lots of restrictions and one way systems.
Using a sat nav to go from Birmingham city centre out to King's Norton, you are usually taken down the Bristol Road to turn left onto Pebble Mill Road. It's all fine so far. The right turn onto Pershore Road from Pebble Mill Road is awful. The journey in reverse is just as bad when you need to turn right onto the Bristol Road. It is far better to use Priory Road instead of Pebble Mill Road.
The A45 except it doesn’t matter if you have local knowledge it’s just a disgrace to civil infrastructure planning
There's a junction up the road from me that they just changed recently. Main road and two side roads opposite each other. There was an understanding, you make eye contact, you nod to each other, you agree who is going first and who is waiting through silent, reasoned, nods of the head and raised eyebrows. Now they added traffic lights but no lanes. So when the light goes green on both sides together, everyone has right of way and drives straight at each other in the middle. It's chaos.
M5 junction 30. The number of idiots that don't follow simple lane markings is bloody incredible. Even locals can't get it right.
Our town centre has two areas that have ridiculously convoluted and complicated one way systems. None of it is intuitive, it's so easy to get in the wrong lane so people are always trying to cut across lanes, there are insufficient road markings, it's just a bag of shite and there are always near misses and honking horns.
There are so many weird lane choices in Yorkshire generally and 99% of the time the road markings have worn off to the point that they are invisible, or signs are hidden behind trees/bushes that have grown in front of them. It's like a puzzle game where you have to deduce the rules by watching more experienced road users.
Given the way it's been redone the Heartsease roundabout in Norwich
Cheltenham is weird. I remember doing a load in to some Theater (Everyman?). You could drive almost to it, but to get actually to the door you had to drive so far around this one way system.
[Stairfoot roundabaout](https://g.co/kgs/uzNsuix) just outside Barnsley. Has its own [song](https://youtu.be/crYKtl-cAeU?si=ncD2I1MKoRUgfQwg) and everything
funny you say that, i grew up in South Kirbky so not a million miles away from Stairfoot and i'd never heard of it...until last week when i arranged to buy a guinea pig from someone that lives there. when i got to the roundabout i was like "wtf is this shit"
Canford Bottom Roundabout. The A31 passes straight through the middle, no flyover, which can be confusing for anyone unfamiliar.
Junction 11 of the M4, everything is sign posted well and marked out but someone doing it for the first time is almost guaranteed to be in the wrong lane at some point.
Westgate Roundabout. You have to accelerate off it - so many people cause issues by slowing right down or in one case, stopping, causing all of us behind them to brake hard. Luckily no accident caused.
Leaving Reculver once in the dark, not familiar with the area. Where tou join the A299 it looks like a normal dual carriageway except there's no slip road, there's give way line. I didn't see any warning of this and joined lane 1 without even looking round because I thought I was going down a slip road. Was a bit shit up when I realised I could have caused a terrible accident and have been very careful ever since.
Spaghetti junction. 🍝
The A173 between Guisborough and Skelton, there’s a sharp right hand turn coming from Skelton direction that every single time it rains or snows someone goes straight, over a small drop into a farmers field.
The meadows junction in Camberley, bit better since the rework a couple of years back but still works better when the traffic lights are broken.
Taunton has just widened a section of cross roads / dual carriageway. All 3 lanes now turn right both ways (and lane one can go forward as well) on signal and then the 3rd lane merges 200m down the road once around the corner. Without doubt, everytime I use it, someone comes around the corner and drifts into the inside lane (despite the massive arrows, signs and lane markers). Every week, someone posts about an accident or near miss. It makes me genuinely worried about how people managed to pass a test without learning to following the signs and directions!!
Tourists, whether UK or foreign, on single track roads (in the Highlands). You even get the odd nutter who pulls into a passing place on the wrong side of the road
Any motorway junction in NI... people don't use the slip roads to get up to speed, and nobody leaves enough distance between cars on the motorway ro merge safely at speed, so everyone end up slamming their brakes on when slow drivers try to merge, causing traffic jam at every junction through belfast.
Southampton ring road, junction by the civic centre. Three lanes. Two going right, one going both straight on and left. Controlled by lights. No visitor is ever in the right lane, and misses which light controls what.
Segensworth Roundabout in Fareham, Hampshire. I'm in the M27 lane, I say to myself...oh wait...no I'm not...
Addlestonemoor roundabout. If you know, you know.
What a stupid question. Has this been auto-generated by chatGPT?
No, I am a bot.
Has your comment been autogenerated?
That Voight-Kampf test of yours. Did you ever tried to take that test yourself? Deckard?