The Magic Roundabout

[whole diary]

[Robin Summerhill]

The other oddity of Colomiers ...

All of France was full of oddities (compared to the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) road network) which have only recently been put right (by "recently" I mean in the last 20 or 30 years) It was all  very well havinng national rules of the road that varied from everybody else's in the old days, but when driving became more international and not everybody knew of or understood the rules (or indeed the reasons for them) there was bound to be trouble.

The things I know about that the French have abandonede in favour of more international ways of doing things (albeit grudgingly in some cases are:

• Traffic entering a roundabout having priority over traffic already on it (that used to cause gridlock in a short space of time)
  
  Priority to the right, meaning that you could be rattling along happily when suddenly a wagon load of straw would appear out of nowhere in front of you
  
  Yellow headlamps

[ray951]

The other oddity of Colomiers ...

All of France was full of oddities (compared to the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) road network) which have only recently been put right (by "recently" I mean in the last 20 or 30 years) It was all  very well havinng national rules of the road that varied from everybody else's in the old days, but when driving became more international and not everybody knew of or understood the rules (or indeed the reasons for them) there was bound to be trouble.

The things I know about that the French have abandonede in favour of more international ways of doing things (albeit grudgingly in some cases are:

• Traffic entering a roundabout having priority over traffic already on it (that used to cause gridlock in a short space of time)
  
  Priority to the right, meaning that you could be rattling along happily when suddenly a wagon load of straw would appear out of nowhere in front of you
  
  Yellow headlamps

Isn't the roundabout at the Arc de Triomphe still priority to the right (ie to traffic joining the roundabout)? I also believe it might be the only roundabout left in France that still has priority to the right.

[Bmblbzzz]

I spent a few months in Paris from autumn 1988 to spring 1989 and I remember the Arc de Triomphe roundabout being completely gridlocked, to the extent that you could walk from central Arc island to the outside, sauntering between the cars as if they were cafe tables. Which I think many of them functioned as for their occupants.

[stuving]

Isn't the roundabout at the Arc de Triomphe still priority to the right (ie to traffic joining the roundabout)? I also believe it might be the only roundabout left in France that still has priority to the right.

Well, that depends how you translate "roundabout". Strictly (and there's no shortage of pedants in France) a rond-point works by priorité à droite, while a carrefour à sens giratoire has signs and markings to give priority to cars déjà présents dans l’intersection. You can drive a long way on roads that go somewhere and never come across any priorité à droite, as it's been widely suppressed on main roads and in a lot of towns by always having lights or marked priorities. But it is still the default, common in little back streets, and once in a while you find one of those cancelled diamond signs on entering a little town.

But Place Charles de Gaulle is more of a big open space for cars to mill about in (if they are lucky) than a roundabout. I think there will be other, smaller, circular town squares elsewhere that have never had anything added to displace priorité à droite. But these are not high-speed roads, so disconcertingly unfamiliar rather than downright scary. The lack of stop lines on side roads should prevent you assuming priority - provided you spot it!

[Bmblbzzz]

And France isn't the only European country to have some sort of priority to the right where not cancelled by diamonds/lights/other markings.

[didcotdean]

A general GB^▸ (Great Britain) rule to give priority to vehicles already on a roundabout in absence of any road sign to the contrary was only introduced in November 1967 (NI was some time later). As such there was no need to put up Give Way signs, which unfortunately infest many roundabouts in Europe where there is a need to cancel other default priorities.

Although the effect was immediate it took time to paint transverse broken white lines on the entrance to all roundabouts. There was a "short television filmlet" produced to explain things.

[grahame]

40th Anniversary yesterday of this gem from ITV

Bid to make Swindon's Magic Roundabout a tourist attraction with its own characters fails

A proposal to turn Swindon's Magic Roundabout into a tourist attraction has failed.

The roundabout - made of five mini-roundabouts - is one of the Wiltshire town's most famous landmarks.

"When you say you're from Swindon people say, with a smile 'Ah the Magic Roundabout'," said Swindon Borough Councillor Kevin Parry.

He and fellow Conservative councillor Barbara Parry had put forward a motion to make the roundabout into a tourist attraction.

The proposal involved asking schoolchildren to create characters who would be placed in the central island of the Magic Roundabout.

[Oxonhutch]

From Autoshenanigans - 56 minutes of it...

here on Youtube

Enjoy ...