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A comment on What are roundabouts? The safety benefits of these circular intersections. Parent comment

Re:What are roundabouts? The safety benefits of these circul... by xnorswap on Thursday October 26, 2023 @03:44AM (#38022877)
Careful with terminology too, because "inside" and "outside" don't mean the same thing to different drivers, particularly in the UK compared to elsewhere.

Many people hear "inside lane" on a motorway and think it's the "fast lane" near the central divider but that's actually the "outside lane". ( source: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/outside-... ).

But that terminology has been confused over time and so many people get it the wrong way around that the DVLA has stopped using it in the highway code.

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Re:What are roundabouts? The safety benefits of these circul... by meheleventyone on Thursday October 26, 2023 @03:49AM (#38022909)
Do you know the origin of the UK use because that always confused me as it’s obviously wrong from the drivers perspective of the road! My wild guess would be that from the drivers seat you look outside to the fast lane and look across the inside of the car to look to the slow lanes.
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Re:What are roundabouts? The safety benefits of these circul... by xen0 on Thursday October 26, 2023 @04:39AM (#38023217)
The normal terminology for the sides of a car are 'nearside' and 'offside', with the nearside being where the kerb is, offside being where other cars would be.

So I would suppose 'inside' and 'outside' were also considered relative to the kerb.

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Re:What are roundabouts? The safety benefits of these circul... by ace32229 on Thursday October 26, 2023 @04:52AM (#38023288)
The fast lane is the furthest lane away from where you'd enter the motorway, therefore it's the outside lane (or so the logic goes!)
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Re:What are roundabouts? The safety benefits of these circul... by HPsquared on Thursday October 26, 2023 @06:32AM (#38023825)
But... aren't entrances/exits usually on the "outside" of something?
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Re:What are roundabouts? The safety benefits of these circul... by taneq on Thursday October 26, 2023 @04:55AM (#38023309)
Wow, I'd never thought of it like that. I'd always assumed "outside lane" was the lane closest to the "outside" of the road (ie. the edge) and "inside lane" was the opposite, and was very confused when I found out some people used it the other way around.
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