DEAR Jasminda,

TWICE now during the holidays I have been beeped while waiting at the roundabout.

I have been driving for decades but I am always wary of roundabouts and sometimes completely change my travel route to avoid them. I think in both cases I was in the right.

Can you clear up the rules for me?

Gilly W.

Dear Gilly,

There are pages and diagrams on the NSW government website devoted to roundabout rules, but I find none of these as useful as the advice my dad gave me which was: ‘treat everyone like a bloody moron, because half of them are; unless you can see the whites of their eyes, don’t trust their blinker’.

In the holiday season, many people are still coming down off their rum ball/espresso martini high and don’t have their wits about them.

|Some use their indicator in a very casual way and others don’t use it at all.

You just can’t trust that drivers are going to exit the roundabout before you enter it, and you could be in danger of being t-boned.

The main rule is to give way to traffic already on the roundabout, and this is all very well and good when motorists are driving in a calm and considerate manner, but it’s not worth risking an accident entering a roundabout when cars are about to enter to your right and are driving at a speed that would cause a collision.

What should be a seamless and graceful glide around the roundabout morphs into a fist-shaking, horn-honking mosh pit in the Christmas holidays and extra caution is advised.

Whatever you do, don’t get agitated with the cars behind you and definitely don’t exit your vehicle, stomp up to their car and administer the wind-down-your-window-and-let’s-see-how-brave-you-are-then-you-clown gesture, as tempting as that may be.

It’s not worth the stress of an altercation and you really will be holding up the flow of traffic.

Carpe diem,
Jasminda.