"Scott" wrote in message
...
So far as another
vehicle having to slow down is concerned, I thought drivers were
supposed to approach road junctions and other hazards with caution.

Yes: approach with caution and be prepared either to stop or to keep going
once you're read the road and worked out, based on the latest sighting of
other cars, whether you need to stop (because the other car is too close) or
can keep going (because he's a comfortable margin outside the threshold
go/no-go decision point). Sometimes you can see immediately that you will
definitely have to stop. Sometimes, if there is *good* (*) visibility of the
road coming from your right, you can see that you can almost certainly go
without needing to slow down beyond a speed to negotiate the roundabout.
Usually it's somewhere between these two points and you have to defer the
decision until you get closer, mindful of the fact that the closer you get,
the shorter is the distance that remains in which you will be able to stop
if you decide it's necessary (and therefore the slower you need to be
going).

And finally, I thought the point of mini-roundabouts was that the
rules were *exactly* the same as for any other roundabout.

They are. All I was saying was that because the distance between you and the
give way line on your right is closer, your decision point for the position
of the car on your right may be before the give way line on a mini
roundabout, whereas it may be after the give way line on a big roundabout.


(*) Sadly more and more roundabouts have a sign board or just a little fence
to spoil your view of approaching traffic from the right in the last few
seconds, meaning that you have to stop in a situation where if you hadn't
had your view blocked by the sign/fence in the last couple of seconds you
could have worked out that it was safe to continue. That's done for "safety
reasons", which is the "anyone can be safe if they are forced to stop"
school of rule-making :-) https://goo.gl/maps/WxBTd5FZJRGqnNUJ8 is an
interesting one. That photo was taken in 2012. Now the chevrons have been
moved closer to the roundabout. Looking at the more recent aerial photo,
it's between the lamp post and the rear of the hard standing (which looks
like somewhere for the police to wait to nab people). Just where you need to
be looking to see how fast the car is going that has emerged from behind the
larch-lap fencing under the bridge. That's a full-size roundabout, not a
mini one, although the (deliberately) badly-placed sign can apply to a mini
roundabout as well,