A common fault that I regularly see while driving on the Denbigh Roundabout (IKEA) in Bletchley is to do with lane discipline around the entrance to the roundabout from Bletcham Way West. I feel this is to do with the road markings and peoples ability to read them correctly. Below I have collected a series of 9 screen grabs from Google Maps traveling from the entrance from Saxon st south (B&Q roundabout) to the exit onto Bletcham Way East.
This first photo is as you enter the inner lane with B&Q on your far left. At this point the grey car in front is in the correct lane for where we are heading, although it is position a little too far to the left in the lane.
At this point we are still following the grey car and the road marking are clear and we can see them pushing us from the inner to the middle lane.
Again all looks simple following the grey car, we can see the arrow road markings here showing us that the left lane is for ahead next exit, middle lane is also next exit but also right and the right lane is for right only.
This is where it starts to get a little tricky as we have the road from Bletcham Way joining from our left. We still need to stay in the middle lane.
This is about the position that most people start to go wrong. As can be seen on the right hand side of the photo, the road markings start to push the lanes outwards. So our lane starts to move from the middle to the left lane. We should be following the white van now across to the left lane. The marking that I feel confuses most here is the line just to the left of the middle arrows. It is angled to take cars entering from Bletcham Way in towards the middle and inner lane, but because of its angle people see it and think it’s to push them into the middle lane next to the white van.
This image is a little further around the roundabout and in this shot the camera car has stayed on the inner lane. Again people traveling on the route we were taking should now be behind the white van going into the left hand lane. Another part of the problem can be seen here, that is the diverging lines in the center of the image. People seem to get confused with these and think that they have to leave the roundabout at this point, when in fact you can cross them and take that left hand lane where the van is.
This shot show where Saxon street from CMK joins the roundabout. We should at this point still be behind the white van in the left lane.
At this point on the roundabout I see some lane discipline issues mainly due to people drifting back towards the right, this is due to the curvature of the roundabout straightening and people not picking it up in time, and as such they have too much turn applied.
This is the last of the shots and shows the exit onto the East bound Bletcham Way. At this point we should be on the far left behind the 4×4.
