Traffic circles... What the hey?

Good day to you.

The issue that is on my heart today is the one concerning traffic circles.

The main aim of a traffic circle at a busy intersection is to let the traffic flow. The reason why it is so effective is because it doesn't require a driver to stop unless there is traffic coming from the right. Yes, a driver entering a traffic circle only has to give way to another driver entering the circle from his right.

Let me sum up the rule in understandable terms: Only stop at a traffic circle if someone approaches from your right.

Don't look around and try to see who stopped first or try not to annoy anyone. Thats not the point. The point is that if everyone follows this one premise upon which the effectivity of the traffic circle rests, the traffic will flow like a river, because that is what it was designed for.

I have to cross many traffic circles in Johannesburg every day and I am flabbergasted at the magnitude of congestion around these circles of ergonomica. Instead of letting the traffic flow, most of our brothers and sisters who don't know the traffic rules because they never actually went for a driving test, have mangled the rules and mechanisms that were designed to ease congestion through ignorance, selfishness and sheer aggression.

O.K. To recap:

At a traffic circle:

1. It is not a first-come-first-served setup like with a stop sign.
2. Entering a traffic circle you, as the driver of the car, only give way (i.o.w. stop for) to a driver who is entering the circle or coming round the circle from your right.

Just to be clear... Your right is the side on which the steering wheel sits in your car. Its the side where the sun comes up if you are facing north. Its the side opposite the hand that wears your wedding ring...

Please spread the word about this "supposed" common knowledge, send it on to everyone you know so that we can start to raise the awareness and bring down stress levels on the roads, especially in Johannesburg.