How to safely navigate a roundabout - YouTube
The above VicRoads video I thought was quite reasonable, however there's one thing that's not made clear, or the cars are acting contrary to what they're advising.
The statement is, "Unless you're travelling straight through you should indicate left when you leave the roundabout to let others know what you're doing - just like you would when you left turn on any road".
In the video you'll see cars travelling straight through in all directions and some indicate and some don't.
What's also weird is three of the four entry points into the roundabout have arrows, but the left to right entry point has no arrows. Having no arrows is a disaster waiting to happen as the car in left hand lane could turn right and the car in the right hand lane could go straight ahead.
Back to the main point in the video. It isn't explained why some cars going straight ahead are indicating left to exit the roundabout yet we're told "unless you're travelling straight through you should indicate left" which implies if you are travelling straight ahead you don't need to indicate.
According to the following link which I believe is for Victoria's road rules, people should indicate if it's practical, but what one person considers practical another may not.
Reviewing the above video we see the following cars going straight through the intersection.
0:29 Yellow truck, indicates, going left to right
0:32 Yellow motorbike, indicates, going right to left
0:38 Red truck, doesn't indicate, going top to bottom
0:42 Green car, indicates, going left to right, yellow car, doesn't indicate, going right to left
0:49 Green car, indicates, going left to right
0:56 Red car, doesn't indicate, going right to left
0:59 Blue car, doesn't indicate, going bottom to top, green car, indicates going left to right
The only pattern I can see if if the car is entering the roundabout and there's no arrows indicating direction, then the if the car is going straight ahead, the car indicates left to exit. For cars going straight across if there's arrows they may or may not indicate. It's just a pattern. It doesn't mean it's right.
In general I feel I indicate correctly when exiting a roundabout, but trying to indicate left to exist when going straight across is difficult as you can't indicate too early otherwise cars on your left waiting to enter the roundabout may think you're turning left at the first exit. So by the time you reach the cars waiting on the left and then indicate to exit left when going straight ahead you're giving almost no advance warning to anyone. Just perhaps a single cycle of the indicator which could be easy to miss. Having said that, I still attempt to indicate to exit if possible.
Kelvin Eldridge
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