What is it with drivers and roundabouts these days?  I know that they are a relatively new phenomenon in the Highlands, and I know it takes time to adjust.  In fact I can remember the first on Lewis quite well, and around Inverness, that can’t be more than 30 years.  Only 30 years of new drivers being taught the rules of the road, going to other places where they have these weird obstructions – like traffic lights and box junctions.  Only last week I came across a woman driving the wrong way round a roundabout; having realised what she had done, instead of exiting at the adjacent exit, she reversed towards where she had entered the roundabout but, because she couldn’t reverse either, she ended up on the traffic island!  Saints preserve us.  It seems that approaching a roundabout increasingly requires you to adopt the mindset of Ben Hur in the Circus Maximus: charge right in and devil take the hindmost.  I’d love a set of retractable scimitar blades on my hubcaps.  Very James Bond.

What happened to “Give way to traffic approaching from the right or already on the roundabout” or “Signal”?  Signal?  You’re lucky to get any signal, never mind one that is appropriate or timely; I assume everyone is an idiot, and wait to see if they really mean it, but maybe it’s not their fault.  Perhaps it is something to do with these warning signs that say “New Road Layout Ahead”:  you know, the ones that have been there since forever?  How long do they need to be there to capture all the local drivers? 3 months, 6, 9, a year at most?  I suppose drivers must see the sign and get confused: perhaps they think it has changed again since this morning or last night and forget what lane they should be in.

In over 45 years of driving I’ve never been hit by, or hit, another moving object and I don’t intend to start now.

GRRR.