If anyone reading this essay has any idea or comments, I would welcome their
thoughts. CDCNottm@AOL.com
If you live outside of Nottingham I will try to explain the situation so that
you can understand the dilemma.
The Derby Road is a main road into the city centre on the south side of the city. A while back the Council decided to make a 24 hour bus lane along most of the inner part of Derby Road. The part that I am considering is the piece that runs past the Queens Medical Centre (the QMC as it is regularly called).
Almost opposite the QMC is a road named "Wollaton Hall Drive". This minor road only has one legal entrance, that from the Derby Road. There is an exit at the other end that is laid out to make it difficult (and illegal) to enter. I have no complaint about that, as otherwise the minor road would become a rat race to avoid the extremely busy roundabout to the west of the QMC.
If one drives in the direction of The City Centre from the QMC roundabout, one has to use the outer of two lanes as the inner lane is the 24 hour bus lane. But I often want to turn left into Wollaton Hall Drive to attend a pensioner's luncheon club at the church hall. So I dive in the outer lane so as to turn left. There is a break in the red road surface that indicates the bus lane. So I turn left across the black tarmac. But many bus drivers appear to think that they have the right of way across the gap in the bus lane. These bold, brave, and bung-ho drivers totally ignore a car in the outer lane with its flashers signalling to turn left.
My question: Forget safety and common sense, and just consider the
legal situation. Would I be within
my right to turn across the front of the speeding bus? It is forbidden to pass a
vehicle on its nearside on an ordinary road. I would have thought that
with the vehicle signalling to go left, it would be exacerbating the illegal act
if the car in front is signalling left.
I must say that there are a minority of bus drivers hat actually slow-down and flash
me across. This, of course, is contradicting what the Highway Code says.
The Code states that flashing one's lights means the same as sounding one's
horn. Another bit of absurdity from on high.
Just off Wollaton Rise there is a pinch-point where only one car is able to
drive. There is no red or white arrows to say which direction has
priority. The distance between two cars waiting to enter the pinch-point
is close to a hundred yards. If I follow the Highway Code I am supposed to
give a blast on my horn to indicate to the other driver that I am giving him the
right of way? If he manages to hear my
horn, inside his car, what will he think?
Another bit of Municipals Madness is the found near Wollaton Village in Bramcote Lane. The Council in their vindictiveness against the motorist have peppered the road with humps. A while back in heavy dusk I was driving towards the Wollaton Vale roundabout. I had dipped headlight on. As with all the other cars my vehicle lurched significantly at each road-hump. A driver was waiting in a nearside road to exit across my path. As I neared the stationary car, the driver pulled across my front in an alarming way. I worked it out later that the driver thought that I had flashed her to allow her to cross my path. The lurching of a car with dipped headlights looks just like a car that has flashed its headlights. Another example of Nottingham Nuttiness
You only have to drive round the Crown Island to see that the traffic engineers who designed the roundabout had a misanthropic outlook. It is true that most of the entrances allow reasonable passage ONCE YOU HAVE LEARNED THE LAYOUT. But if it is the first time that you have encountered the complicated junction, it is only a matter of blind luck if you are in the right lane at the start of negotiating the lanes to get where you want to go. But there is one road from the west that exits on to the roundabout that is DESIGNED for a huge pileup. Community ambulances wait an enormous amount of time for a gap in the traffic (that never comes). If you want to go from Radford Bridge Road toward the QMC, you have to cross three lanes of traffic to get into the right lane to go round the island.
Because of the extreme business of the road during daylight (it may be quiet at 3 am), there is no break in the traffic flow, and of course, City Planners have set the traffic lights' timing to ensure that there is no gap to allow Radford Bridge Road traffic to exit safely. The Community Ambulances just have to barge their way into a line of moving traffic using the "I'm bigger than you" principle. I'm waiting for the day when a lorry driver decides that "No you ain't, I'm the bigger"
This roundabout has three roads (including Radford Bridge Road) that HAVE NO PRIORITY AT ANY TIME. The traffic just has to squeeze in between the traffic that DOES have priority. In the case of Wollaton Road exiting onto the Crown Island, there are a set of pedestrian lights just before the give way lines of the roundabout. These pedestrian lights are designed to trap the unwary motorist who may well (as I have in west London) met traffic lights at the entrance to a roundabout. I saw one van driver who, I presume, fell into the trap. He entered the roundabout at the green light as if it were his right of way. The alert motorist, coming round the curve of the roundabout, braked in time.
As one goes round the curves of this roundabout, to motorists waiting to exit from Wollaton Road, they see the car on the roundabout as if it is entering Wollaton Road going west. But that is just a Council-inspired spoof. Although it appears to be leaving the roundabout, that is just part of the City Council's way of engineering a collision. The car then does a sharp right turn to stay in its lane that takes it round to the right. Waiting in the Wollaton Road to enter the roundabout you just have to say a short prayer and accelerate hard. The pothole in the road in front of you, caused by leaving the sunken metalwork as it was before the road was resurfaced, give your suspension quite a jolt. But it's all good for business for the motor industry; as are the multitude of speed cushions (what an absurd name!).
I wonder if any of the Councillors have shares in a car-repair company.?