Flashing ambers lights.

Here I'm sure some drivers would not bother to wait their turn, on the
reasonable assumption that the other car(s) would give way rather than
hit them.

 

I can't recall ever seeing a junction like that in the UK.

 

It's the same rule in the US isn't it, at a four way stop? First to
arrive is first to go?

 

They have loads of them in Guernsey: looks like a box junction.

 

That's the rule, yes- but the clueless think that being on the right trumps
getting there first, to the extent that they will roll through the stop
sign at a goodly rate of speed, and nearly collide with traffic to the left,
after it has already stopped, and started to go through the intersection.
Of course the hard of thinking haven't figured out that getting there first
has to trump "being to the right at approximately the same time".

Being on the right only gives one priority if you arrive simultaneously or
as close to as makes no difference. I think it's fairly obvious that you
can't have arrived first at the intersection if you haven't even come to a
stop yet, while other traffic at the intersection is at a standstill.

 

They certainly do in Saudi and a couple of other Arabic nations.
Mind you, we're not talking about them, are we?

 

Well of course. I didn't say I didn't do it. I had a nice 535 BMW when I
lived/worked there. I discovered exactly how good the brakes were one
morning when a scooter doing about 3mph tootled around in front of me.

Much earlier I had a Montego Trubo[1], it could only manage about three
doughnuts before the brakes faded to nothing. It was quite a shock
arriving at the fourth.

Front left tyres never lasted long in that place.

[1] typo, but I left it because I liked it.

 

I don't recall Denmark ever being LH. The wiki article suggest that it was
their colonies.

At any rate, you can't compare the volume of traffic in Sweden in '67 to
the volume of traffic in the UK in 2011. Can't be done. Even Eire would
have problems, I'd've thought.

 

.... sometimes they work in France.

 

It's not that bad. No worse than the UK at any rate. I'd go so far as
to say that the French are more respectful of two wheelers than any
cage driver in the UK. It doesn't mean that they're any less blind,
mind.

 

Nah, they'd simply do it in stages - cars one week, other vehicles the
next.

 

On a slight swerve, I find roundabouts the hardest aspect of changing
sides of the road when abroad.

 

It's generally a piece of cake when I come back to the UK in a cage.
The problem is when you're on a bike. That's a nightmare. Once I was
riding through Brum and came up to a roundabout. I couldn't figure out
why the traffic was going the wrong way for a few secs, until I
realised that I'd crossed over onto the roundabout exit...

T-Junctions are worse on the bike, IME. You have to make sure you look
in every bloody direction before moving out, otherwise you'll
inevitably look the wrong way.

 

+1 I find it *much* harder on a bike in general. Road positioning,
everything. Roundabouts definitely the weirdest.

 

If only they could stop using their fucking left indicators when
they're going straight on. Really gets on my tits, that does.

 

Boom boom.

 

+1

 

I don't pay attention to indicators, as they rarely seem to know
how they work. I'm always paying close attention to their lane
positioning though. Quite often, at large roundabouts, they put
themselves in the right lane to turn left (left lane to turn
right for the UK residents). Whilst road positioning is piss poor
in general (no more worse than the UK, IME), roundabouts are an
anathema to the French and they really don't know how to set
themselves up properly at the approaches to roundabouts.

 

Aye. And then they sometimes go all the way round on the outside line,
causing a lot of confusion when I'm, quite naturally, cutting close to
the middle.

 

Not so duh, really. There is a high percentage of drivers who take the
"RIGHT on red" literally, and don't know it applies at one way streets
as "left on..."
Just more evidence that most drivers don't know the rules of the road.