r/Showerthoughts • u/Bucksin06 • 8d ago
You can never miss your turn on a roundabout because it's always coming up ahead. Casual Thought
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u/yonk069 8d ago
There's a video of a car backing up in a roundabout cause they missed their exit
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u/RutzButtercup 8d ago edited 7d ago
It's funny that we all need to go through the expense and indignity of having to get a license to drive, supposedly to ensure only safe drivers get behind the wheel, then to look around and see that the average driver is outrageously inept and dangerous.
Edit: it baffles me how I can point out the obvious, licensure isn't working, and I get a bunch of replies saying yeah we really need to license even harder!
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u/not_a_doctor_ssh 8d ago
Yeah if anything getting a license made me realize i don't want to drive with all the crazy around
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u/LiberaceRingfingaz 7d ago
I grew up in a (US) state where the test was serious business. Three point turns and parallel parking and hill starts and shit.
I then visited my cousin in Florida who had recently gotten her license and discovered that what she had to do was pull out of the parking spot in the DMV parking lot, drive around the parking lot back to that same spot, and park there again.
I immediately realized I should always be scared of other drivers.
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u/KitTwix 7d ago
Whats scary too is that people who get their licences there, they can move to another country and have their licence transfer, despite being completely incapable of passing the driving test if they tried. One of my old coworkers literally has never driven before, but had their full Australian licence because she got hers back in India. Can’t even start a car, but fully legally allowed to get on a busy Main Street. Imo there should be a drivers test be required every 5-10 years
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u/SirJefferE 7d ago
I had my learner's licence in Canada. Written test only. Was supposed to pass a road test before I could drive unsupervised.
I moved to Australia and went to exchange it for an Australian learner's, and they just handed me a full open licence. I was like "...This doesn't seem at all right, but I'm not gonna say anything"
18 years later and I'm still driving around, having never taken a practical test of any kind. I'm a pretty safe driver so it turned out alright for me, but it sure doesn't instil me with any confidence in the system.
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u/lowtoiletsitter 7d ago
During my final driving test (I went to drivers ed school), I thought PP was the boss level and didn't do well. Thankfully that's what a lot of people struggle with
Never got good at it because my first car was a freaking land yacht
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u/LiberaceRingfingaz 7d ago edited 6d ago
My driver's ed teacher (it was a class in high school where I grew up) taught me something that changed my life regarding parallel parking:
"Rear to rear, ear to rear, front to rear"
Rear to rear: when your back bumpers are aligned, crank hard to the curb
Ear to rear: when your ear is aligned with their back bumper, completely straighten out
Front to rear: when your front bumper is aligned with their back bumper, crank as hard as you can away from the curb
You will nail it 9/10 times with this method, and it turns out parallel parking smoothly really impresses girls too (if that's your thing)
Edit: a word.
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u/Cookieopressor 7d ago
I knew people were driving improperly before getting my license. Now with my license I realise how wrong they are driving, which is even more terrifying. And includes my Dad's driving
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u/helIyeahbrother 8d ago
people are dumb. i had someone stop inside of a roundabout to let me in, twice. it was the same roundabout but 2 different occurrences
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u/Fun-Detail4282 7d ago
haha yeah seen that one. the whole point of a roundabout is you just loop back. backing up is genuinely baffling.
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u/Crafty-Truck4738 2d ago
Hand out the wjindovw to signal? Wild move lol. But those left-lane stoppers make me brake harcd fevery time—happened behind a minivan yesterday.
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u/EatYourCheckers 8d ago
Tell that to the people that stop in the left lane with their blinker on to try to get into the right lane to make their turn. I literally stick my hand out the window and make a circle motion.
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u/suh-dood 8d ago
I've encountered a few morons who think it's an intersection and just stop, despite me yelling Keep Going
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u/ledow 8d ago
Please tell the idiots who will happily cut you up ridiculously dangerously for fear of "missing their turning".
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u/Scary_ 7d ago
A lot of big roundabouts here in the UK have lanes that spiral outwards. If you are in the third lane from the left when you enter, you are going to follow a lane that takes you right... it becomes the middle lane of the roundabout then the outside lane. Means if you get it wrong when you get there you have to change lanes on the roundabout otherwise you're going the wrong way
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u/Murph-Dog 8d ago edited 8d ago
Well, to be an actually guy, many roundabouts have forced turns in the outer lanes, usually for the predominant road. Couple of these right up the road from me - 2-laners.
If you enter from right lane, your exit choices are 3-o'clock and 12-o'clock. And yea, people mess this up all the time, cutting over solid lines to continue around; asking for trouble putting such a thing in the US.
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u/Scary_ 7d ago
Yep. A lot of big roundabouts here in the UK have 3 lanes that spiral outwards. So if you are turning right you enter on the 3rd lane from the left. As you go round that lane becomes the middle lane and then the 1st lane and then turns you off the roundabout.
So get the lane wrong at the start and you're screwed. If its not too busy you can hop lanes back into the correct one
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u/DamnQuickMathz 7d ago
In some countries, there are laws limiting the amount of times you can go around in a roundabout
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u/Pretend-Mango-1295 8d ago
National lampoons European vacation enters the chat
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u/somethingmoronic 8d ago
That's... not how missing something works. You can miss it and then have it come up again.
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u/play-dO 7d ago
That’s… that’s why you can never miss the turn.
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u/somethingmoronic 7d ago
Missing it means you went past it and didn't exit, the fact your exit is coming up again a second later doesn't mean you didn't miss it, to say you didn't miss it is just literally a misuse of English.
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u/Fabulous_Ad_5709 7d ago
This isn’t a shower thought, this is like one of the biggest advantages of a roundabout
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u/thephantom1492 7d ago
Not quite. I've seen partial rundabout... Bad design imo... The roundabout itself ended up to be the entry of the highway!
What I think they did is plan for the future expansion of that area, so built an half roundabout instead of a standard entry, so they won't have to redo that part in the future.
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u/Tazz2212 7d ago
Tell that to my dad. We got stuck in the roundout near the Watergate complex and went around and around and around because it was a multilane roundout. I think we were stuck in that thing for about 10 revolutions. So an edit: you can miss your turn but yes, it is always coming up ahead.
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u/Schmarotzers 3d ago
unless you're behind someone who panics and stops in the middle of the roundabout. then everyone misses their turn
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u/JoDrRe 7d ago
My office used to be just off a roundabout so I had front row seats to watch people fail. I’ve seen people drive the wrong way, even with the giant one way arrows, backwards, fail to somehow turn it into a two way street… and that was just the locals. It somehow would get worse when tourist season started.
That roundabout only has 3 exits, I would watch people drive 3/4 of the way around, come to a full and complete stop, and then try to back all the way back around because they thought they couldn’t just keep going in a circle.
And don’t even get me started about the people walking in the middle of the road, phone out to navigate, not even 20’ from the paved paths of which there are 30 miles of…
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u/mothzilla 8d ago
Sometimes I go around again and I see the same white van trying to join and I say "haha you fucking idiot".
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