Why can't french drivers understand how roundabouts work!

Welcome to France

I think most do. Do You ?

Your diagram is misleading as if there are two lanes entering into a roundabout and two lanes on the exit you can use right hand lane to 'all the way round' if you like indicating accordingly.

There is a roundabout exactly like this in a place called Vizille as you drive towards Grenoble. For some mad reason some drivers stay in the right lane all the way round when turning left.

Even when I ask my students they agree that the above diagram is correct but sometimes they can't be bothered moving to the correct lane!

There's been a thread on the subject before. Many people stay in the right-hand lane if they aren't sure where their exit is, particularly if it isn't a simple crossroads. And/or if the left-hand lane is already occupied when they enter. And/or if they aren't confident enough to cut back across the right-hand lane when exiting.
What does annoy me is their apparent ignorance of what the indicator's purpose is.

The roundabout you are talking about (heading towards Grenoble) is badly designed. The duel carriageway (two lanes) goes into the roundabout but on the exit (left) is one lane. But if you can't get into the left hand lane in time (especially in the ski season) because of the traffic or you don't know the road you would use the righthand lane. That is allowed. Lorries will always use the left hand lane.

From what I remember, the duel carriageway heading into the roundabout never originally existed....i.e it was one lane going in and one lane out.

We think it is written into the highway code. " The use ofindicators is only manditory every Thurday on alternative leap-years" and on the other hand "Overtaking is compulsory on blind bends and just before the crest of a hill"

We were behind a driving school car the other day which went round both roundabouts on the way into town without any use of an indicator at all so presumably the intructor was just as ignorant.

Arc de Triomphe sorts the men out from the boys

!! Yup: I think my record was 5 or 7 times around before I managed to exit ungracefully . Back in the day I solved that by driving over halfway around the 'periph & entering Paris from the other side ... (Place de la Bastille was actually my driving-in-Paris Nemisis).

(And yes, there was a previous thread on the subject)

i think therein lies the problem - you are not supposed to go all the way round in the right hand lane because someone who enters at the same time as you in the left lane and wants to leave at the third exit is going to find you in the way when he gets to his exit!

From the start of the dual carriageway you have at least a km to get in the correct lane. It's mostly the morning commuters that seem to find the roundabout complicated. Some even move from the left lane to the right lane before they get there!

IVV is correct. While roundabouts are accomodating of slightly different routes, it generally makes sense to use the designed one, and going all the way round in the outer lane is not optimal as you are more likely to unnecessarily obstruct others trying to join or leave the roundabout.

I think THIS just about covers it.

Your link has a problem CS

Well that's his problem - he's the one who needs to change lanes and if he didn't want to change lanes at some point he shouldn't have gone into the left hand one in the first place should he - he knew he'd have to get back into the right hand one at some stage.

When I first realised that French rules for roundabouts were different from UK ones and I could correctly stick to the right hand lane in my motorhome, I did so very timidly at first and expected all kinds of problems. No problem at all, never got hooted at or anything, they cope.

(That's probably cos I've never had to share a roundabout with Howie.)