Junction of Western Road and Dudley Road

Junction of Western Road and Dudley Road
The cycleway on the far side of Dudley Road crosses Western Road via a toucan crossing, but construction of the cycleway outside the hospital has yet to be completed. This junction in general is very poorly implemented, and shows what happens when desperation to keep motor traffic flowing smoothly takes precedence over everything. The left-most lane (from the opposite perspective) has a double arrow head that allows turning both left and right, but not straight on. However, that didn't stop people from going straight on, and I don't think it is intended that straight on should be disallowed. Worse still, when drivers in that lane take advantage of the arrow in order to turn right, they find themselves coming into conflict with traffic in the conventional right-turn lane, because the exit is too narrow to allow a "lazy turn" (such as the driver of the white car is making, like almost every other driver), but there are no lane markings to guide drivers through the junction on a tighter radius so that they have completed the turn before they get to the traffic island. Note how the grey SUV (that made a "lazy turn" from the conventional right-turn lane) is effectively occupying the entire carriageway, a situation that only gets worse when the vehicle is a truck. I did see one driver making the turn as it should be made, but only one, and that driver was in the left-hand lane so it didn't have any benefit. So most drivers ended up trying to merge at the exit from the junction when a conflict occurred. Fortunately very few drivers tried to turn right from the left-hand lane, minimising the opportunities for a collision. It's worth adding that in the Netherlands roads are designed so that even if you are encountering a junction for the first time, it will be obvious which lane you should be in because all junctions have the same lane arrangement.

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