[Bill14564]

Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby

Here's a little experiment for you:

Look at an old fashioned watch. See how the hands connect in the middle. Now change the time to exactly 6 o'clock.

Look at those hands. They go straight up and down. Or, if you were in a roundabout, straight north and south. Or straight east and west.

Notice there is no way to go STRAIGHT through that clock, from south to north, without running into the center of the clock where the two hands meet.

If that were a traffic circle, and you were going STRAIGHT through the roundabout, you would do the same thing with your car. I can assure you, the results would be unpleasant.

No, in order to move your finger around counter-clockwise from "near-center" (the inside lane), you go around, UNTIL you see the 12 o'clock coming up on your...what is that called? Oh yeah. On your right. When you see that 12 o'clock number coming up on your right, you veer away from the counter-clockwise movement, and instead, go to your RIGHT.

If you don't go to your right, you will simply continue going around in circles, endlessly, until you run out of gas or get a blister on your finger (depending on whether you're driving a car or moving your finger around a watch face).

You are physically, literally, moving RIGHT when you exit out of a traffic circle. That is what you are doing with your hands on the wheel, it's what your car is doing, and that's why you're supposed to put on your RIGHT turn signal when you exit.

Or you could think about the center of the circle like a box in the road - you steer around the box in order to continue going straight.