One of the more difficult road layouts for learners to understand is the T-junction with priority over vehicles from the left or right. The majority of allegedly “experienced” road users haven’t got a clue about them, either.
Essentially, what they are is a T-junction, but instead of the naturally assumed arrangement whereby the upright of the ‘T’ meets the cross-bar at a give way line, the give way is actually on one the the arms of the cross-bar. For all practical purposes, you have a junction on a bend – with the bend being 90°. You generally find them on relatively quiet roads. On busier roads – and in places where the local authority has at least two brain cells to rub together – traffic lights take over and the issue of priority becomes moot, since safety is far more important.
They can be quite dangerous simply because people don’t understand them, ignore them, or just don’t see them. So take a look at this video.
It’s from my dashcam, recorded during a lesson on 11 July, and shows the T-junction between Canal Street and Collin Street just outside Broadmarsh. Until we encountered the junction on this lesson, I was not aware this junction was going to be altered other than the likelihood of it having temporary lights while they demolish the shopping centre car park.
For at least 40 years, this junction has been controlled by traffic lights. It is one of the busiest junctions in Nottingham, and it has five lanes coming in from Collin Street. Since it features on Colwick test routes, it is vital that pupils know how to deal with it. Unfortunately, for the last 10 years, Nottingham has become one complete set of road works and semi-permanent gridlock, and the Broadmarsh demolition is just the latest in a series of major development plans which serve to introduce huge traffic restrictions on the busiest routes for ridiculously long periods of time.
The thing about traffic light-controlled junctions is that the vast majority of road users abide by them. Even the most inept of drivers will have had to understand the concept of red means stop, and green means go in order to scrape their test pass, and although you do get the occasional retard who is so stressed out by driving in the city they don’t actually see the lights, the worst red light jumping morons usually don’t push it too far.
Nottingham City Council, who have repeatedly demonstrated themselves to be incompetent when managing every aspect of Nottingham, has decided that this busy junction is no longer to be controlled by lights, but instead has turned it – literally overnight and with no significant prior warning that I am aware of – into one where Collin Street traffic has permanent priority over that coming into the city along Canal Street.
Let me just put that in a different way: Nottingham City Council has altered an extremely busy light-controlled junction into one where anyone using it has to interpret new road markings and make decisions beyond the basic “is that light red or green” type. After more than 40 years.
You can see from the video that if my pupil had exercised his right of way, that pink lorry – operated by Seth Punchard Storage and Distribution (tel. 07557 193040), and with the registration number AY08 AHZ (which, incidentally, is not the white colour it is registered as being) – would have gone straight into us. He hadn’t slowed down at all, and I am fairly certain that we would have been seriously injured or even killed had he hit us.
Several other cars went through, and although you can’t see it, I was angrily gesticulating to a DPD courier van off to the left and pointing at the give way lines, because he was trying it as well.
The new layout is an accident waiting to happen. The Nottingham Post (I advise you to have a pop-up blocker if you follow this link, otherwise it’ll take 10 minutes for the page to load) is reporting drivers’ consternation already. Naturally, the idiots in the Council are defending their incompetence.
The part that makes me laugh is where they naturally start quoting clueless people in order to try and maintain a balance where there isn’t one.
Laurie Harking, a retired librarian, said: “…it looks like a pretty big give way sign to me, I’m not sure how you would miss it.”
Yes, dear. I’m sure the family of most of the person potentially lying across several different tables in the local morgue would be comforted by that. My video, above, clearly shows that innocent people are being put at risk.
Changing the layout would have been bad enough. Changing it to this particular layout is stupid. Criminally stupid.