I had never seen this one before.
So, we come to a light near our house and it turned red.
We stopped.
A car, coming in the other direction, also stopped, but suddenly he turned right onto the other street (legal to turn right) and then he did a U-Turn in that street (not sure if that was legal) and then turned right again and zoomed past us.
Don’t think I have ever seen this “trick” before, and I am sure if there were police nearby they might have frowned on that.
Think of it as him showing the law up 
I’ve seen (and done similar) - it’s the type of bollox driving you do to gain 5 seconds in your journey.
A related one I’ve seen near me (that use to cause serious road rage) involves a dual carriageway road that gets v badly backed up with traffic onto a roundabout, because everyone is taking the same left exit into a narrower single carriageway road. So everyone is sitting in gridlock in the lefthand lane, inching forward to the roundabout. A cheeky manoeuvre is to zoom down the empty right hand lane, turn right at the roundabout, go right the way round it and leave at the popular exit having right of way. You’d save about 10 minutes when traffic is bad.
Dangerous though, I’ve seen truck drivers waiting in the left line suddenly change lanes to block people trying this stunt, people out of their cars shouting in each others faces etc. For these reasons the junction has now been widened and rebuilt.
I’ve done it before at this one stoplight that’s extremely long. It saves way more than five seconds; more like two minutes.
And more than that if you can bypass a long line of cars that’s waiting at the light ahead of you by turning into a gas station on the left or something rather than making a right at the light. I don’t make a habit out of it, but it’s gotten me to work on time whereas I would have been late otherwise.
We could combine these two tricks. Take the empty lane into the roundabout, take any exit and drive until you are out of sight of those still waiting in the congested lane, make a U-turn, return to the roundabout and take the exit you originally intended. Unless you have a very distinctive car or license plate, would anyone notice the same car coming through the roundabout twice? A wig or false moustache may be used to further disguise your intentions.
This is an advanced maneuver, and should not be attempted by amateurs.
Firstly, as an American, I have to say that ‘carriageway’ sounds delightfully antique and the only thing ‘roundabout’ signifies to me is a song on the Yes album Fragile.
On topic: If I understand the situation you’ve described correctly, there is a perfectly legal way to avoid a prolonged wait that is to be discouraged because it is (for some unstated reason) considered ‘cheating’ by those who do not take advantage of it.
This reminds me of a traffic situation where I live. There is a freeway with four lanes in each direction (octuple carriageway?) that is serviced by three two-lane tunnels. The two outside tunnels are dedicated, but the center tunnel is shut down, briefly, twice each day in order to reverse it’s direction to compensate for rush-hour traffic (which is strongly westward in the morning and eastward in the evening). This means that, at any time of day, traffic in one direction must merge from four lanes down to two.
There are orange pylons that magically rise out of the roadway to herd traffic to the side, but most people merge over more than a mile before they must. These people get very angry at those who ‘cheat’ by staying in the other lanes until they must merge. The ‘conformists’ are angry because all those cars merging in at the last moment slows the traffic in their lanes to a crawl. I was one of these people–quietly seething at those bastards who blithely pass me by, only to cut in in front, thereby increasing my time spent seething.
Then one day I was in a terrible hurry and, guiltily, cheated. I had an epiphany! I was suddenly amazed at the stupidity of all those cattle who voluntarily join into a mile long queue, all the while seething at those who legally pass them by. I was mystified as to how I could have thought that I had been, somehow, on the high moral ground before. I could clearly see that if everyone stayed in their respective lanes until the forced merge all would be equal. It was not my fault that these others could not see this truth. Since then I’ve always merged at the last moment and I try not to feel too awfully smug and superior about it.
p.s. in re roundabouts:
In the U.S. you can sometimes find what we call ‘traffic circles’, which usually service intersections that have more than the typical four ways in and out. These are most common in long-established communities.
All the ones I’ve seen, however, are one-way–you must turn to the right both into and out of the circle–even if your destination is directly to your left. All approaches must yield to traffic already in the circle. They are considered to be somewhat unsafe at that. It would seem downright irresponsible to design one for two-way traffic.
Don’t do it in Hubbard, Ohio and many other municipalities:
Actually in SE Michigan we’re in the process of adding more and more roundabouts. No, not “traffic circles,” but “roundabouts.” There are things that make modern roundabouts better than traffic circles (at least as far as the distinction in terminology is used here in Michigan). I fully support the roundabouts. Once the dumb drivers get used to them, they’re better even than Michigan lefts, and they can be installed in non-boulevard locations. The two biggest “dumb driver” problems are (1) they don’t know where to go, and (2) they don’t realize that “yield” <> “stop.”
This situation describes my thinking – before and after – almost exactly!
That refers to leaving the roadway, I’d think. You’re not avoiding compliance with a traffic control device, since you still have to stop before making your right turn at the red light.
The road is public property, so I would think they could enforce it on those grounds.
If you drive the same route twice a day every day and you already know where the lights are going to be and how long they take, sometimes you’ll see that doing this can save you upwards of 2-3 minutes, which can be important depending on how late you are…
This. God, that annoys me. If you are too timid, or lack the spatial-relation skills, to merge with moving traffic, select an alternate route or call a cab.
Otherwise, traffic circles are vastly superior to four-way stops IMO. They are all the rage now in my neck of the woods as well and I applaud the trend.
To the OP, I’ve never pulled that particular stunt. There have been a few intersections, however, at which I’ve routinely treated a red light as a stop sign at certain times of day.
There are hardly any of them down here (mostly, they’re in weird places like apartment complex parking lots) but there’s a definite third “dumb driver” problem which is that they don’t know how to signal in one.
The problem with the “going down the empty lane and cutting in” theory is that it probably leads to slower average journey times overall (not for those cutting in, obviously). This is because cutting in causes braking all the way down the traffic queue, whereas merging in advance creates less of this. Therefore everyone would be better off overall if everyone merged in advance. For this reason, where a merge is well signalled in advance (on a British motorway there will typically be warnings 800, 400, and 200 yards before the actual merge, and maybe one a mile out as well), I will let people in up to a certain point (say 400 yards), but after that I will make sure there is less than half a yard between me and the next car’s bumper, and wish everyone else does the same. What gives the cutting-in people the entitlement to get to their destination 2 minutes earlier than everyone else? We’re all in a hurry, you know!
Every standard roundabout in the UK operates like this, yes (I think there are one or two exceptions but where you are supposed to go is very clearly defined to all but eliminate the chance of something going wrong, and these are rare).
Bwuuuh? How are you going to design a safe, two-way traffic circle? Circles have to be one way; anything else is called an intersection.
Well, you could put a mini-roundabout at each “exit” of the big two-way roundabout.
If you look at it that way, Swindon’s Magic Roundabout makes sense.
I hate when I’m waiting at a red light, and the guy across from me facing the oppisite direction turns left in front of me the instant the light turns green.
Lets just say he’s lucky I don’t have a badge and a pistol.
By whom? Communities in my area are installing more and more roundabouts because they are faster and safer. The mayor of Carmel, IN received a few awards last year because of his roundabout efforts.