Sad to use this blog to gripe about traffic – but what is it that people don’t get about hook turns? Every day I ride my motorcycle to work in the city and each day I have to do at least one hook turn. For those who’ve never driven in Melbourne (and some who do) a hook turn is a right turn executed from the left side of the road. When the light turns green in the forward direction you line up orderly on the left side of the intersection, allowing traffic and trams to continue forward unimpeded. When the lights turn orange you wait for traffic to stop and then the waiting line of cars turns. All very neat and tidy – and I imagine dreadfully scary for any interstate or international visitors. Shame it doesn’t work out so well in practise – people seem awfully frightened, leaving big spaces in the queue and then panicking and accelerating at a million miles an hour and trying to run me over!

Instructions for executing a hook turn are here on wikipedia.

I hate to think what Melbourne drivers would think as they approached the Hemel Hempstead magic roundabout…Â I know I soiled myself.