Near Miss of the Day 390: A&E doctor gets fast close pass

There are lots of road junctions out to the south and west of Bristol which were very much designed so that motor vehicles could go around them fast.

When they put in the new shared-use path through Abbots Leigh, a couple of years ago now, this was something I raised with the council (North Somerset) - lots of the side roads have very wide turnings so cars can go in and out of them quite fast even though visibility is appalling.  Nothing got changed.

Far too many junctions get lengthened to allow the continuation of motorist's speed.

I can avoid many of the ones on dual carriageways, but some of the ones roundabouts are unavoidable.

There's a balance to be made here, and it's not just a matter of convenience. Where you have a continuing fast road, e.g. a dual-carriageway or motorway, then you don't want an abrupt turn on entry or exit as that has safety consequences in the traffic flow, potentially a way up-stream of the turn for exits (have a search for 'characteristic waves' and shock or density waves) - but you obviously don't need or even want something that barely deviates from the original either, which just makes the potential speed differences between road users that much more acute at the point of exit (well, not motorways generally).

Where there is the possibility of road users with radically different speeds, you would hope that the design is done such that you reduce that difference as much as possible on exit (or design around it, such as segregation) whilst avoiding too many discontinuities in the flow on the main highway - that's clearly not happening in many cases alas, but I don't think it would be necessarily good to design those junctions in a similar manner to, say, residential urban areas with limits a fraction of the ones on major highways - hence a balance.

You could mandate a slowing zone before each junction, which might help reduce speeds in a more predictable and controlled manner, and hence allow for more agressive exits - can't see that happening alas.

Ultimately though, regardless of design, it's the responsibility of the drivers of the faster vehicles to make sure the path is clear ahead.