An investigation into whether Somerset West has any collective understanding of the Lourens Street traffic circle or whether we have simply decided, as a community, to agree not to discuss it
It began, as most important journalistic investigations do, with a near-miss.
I was proceeding in an orderly and lawful fashion along Lourens Street on a Tuesday morning — indicating, checking mirrors, doing everything my Grade 10 driver’s ed instructor, Meneer Swanepoel, drummed into me in 1987 — when a white Toyota Fortuner entered the traffic circle from my left without yielding, without indicating and, I strongly suspect, without any particular awareness that a circle was involved. The driver was on his phone. He had a Springbok sticker in his window. He did not look up.
I completed my exit onto Andries Pretorius Street in a cold sweat and drove directly to Vida e Caffè, where I ordered a cortado and began asking questions.
THE INVESTIGATION
Over the following two weeks, the Helderburger Motoring Desk conducted what we are confident is the most rigorous qualitative survey ever undertaken of traffic circle comprehension in the greater Somerset West area. We approached 23 individuals at various locations — the Waterstone Village parking lot, the Checkers in Main Road and the area near the Mugg & Bean where someone is always standing with a trolley looking confused — and asked them a single question.
“Who has right of way in a traffic circle?”
The results were, scientifically speaking, alarming.
THE FINDINGS
Seven respondents said, with complete confidence, that the person already in the circle has right of way. These respondents are correct and we commend them, though three of them admitted under further questioning that they learned this from a podcast rather than the K53 handbook.
Six respondents said the person entering from the right has right of way. This is incorrect in South Africa, where we drive on the left and yield to traffic already in the circle. It is, however, correct in France and we note that three of these six respondents had recently returned from Franschhoek, which may be relevant.
Four respondents said they “just sort of feel it out.” One of these respondents was behind the wheel at the time of the interview, which we found troubling.
Three respondents said it depends on the size of your vehicle, a view with no basis in the National Road Traffic Act but considerable support in observed Somerset West driving behaviour.
Two respondents said they always stop completely before entering, regardless of what is happening in the circle. When pressed, one of them clarified that she also stops after exiting, “just to be sure.”
One respondent, a retired civil engineer, produced from his wallet a laminated card on which he had written the relevant section of the Road Traffic Act and asked whether we needed a copy. We said yes. He had not brought spares.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
The Lourens Street circle has occupied its current position long enough to have been navigated by at least three generations of Somerset West drivers, none of whom appear to have reached a consensus on its operating principles. Oral history suggests the circle was considered controversial when first installed, primarily on the grounds that it interrupted what had previously been a perfectly functional straight road.
“My father never trusted it,” one 68-year-old resident told us outside the Pick n Pay. “He said if God had wanted us to drive in circles, He would have made the town round.”
We put it to this resident that Stellenbosch also has traffic circles and seems to manage reasonably well.
“Stellenbosch,” he said, in a tone that closed the matter.
THE FORTUNER PROBLEM
No investigation of this kind can proceed without addressing the Toyota Fortuner, which has emerged in our research as a vehicle of particular significance to the Lourens Street circle ecosystem. Of the eleven near-miss incidents described to us by respondents during the survey period, seven involved a Fortuner. We do not suggest that Fortuner ownership causes poor circle etiquette. We merely note the correlation and invite readers to draw their own conclusions.
Hettie van der Westhuizen of Jamestown, who drives a 2009 Honda Jazz and has done so with great precision for fourteen years, described the experience of entering the Lourens Street circle as “like joining a conversation that everyone else is already having, in a language you don’t quite speak.”
We thought this was extremely well put.
THE MUNICIPALITY’S POSITION
The Helderburger Motoring Desk submitted a formal query to the relevant municipal department asking whether any educational signage, community outreach or driver refresher programme was planned for the Lourens Street circle.
We received an automated reply informing us that our query had been received and would be attended to within 21 working days.
That was six weeks ago.
We take this as confirmation that the municipality’s position is, broadly, the same as the community’s: wing it and hope for the best.
CONCLUSION
South African road law is unambiguous. Traffic already in a circle has right of way. You yield before entering. You indicate your exit. You do not stop in the middle of the circle to reconsider your life choices and you do not treat the circle as a four-way stop with curves.
This is what the law says.
What actually happens on Lourens Street is a different and richer tradition — a kind of improvised community theatre performed daily at low speed, in which every driver brings their own interpretation, their own sense of timing and, in some cases, their own lane markings.
We have not resolved anything with this investigation. We have simply documented what was already true: nobody knows, everybody copes and the Honda Jazz drivers are handling it with considerably more grace than the rest of us.
Drive safely, Somerset West.
Meneer Swanepoel would be horrified.
The Helderburger Motoring Desk operates out of a corner table at Vida e Caffè and accepts no liability for any traffic incidents occurring before the cortado arrives.
Corrections: Last month’s motoring column referred to the Andries Pretorius Street robot as “the one near the Spar.” There is, we are informed, more than one Spar. We regret the confusion and note that this is not entirely our fault.
THE HELDERBURGER
Motoring Desk
Kobus Liebenberg
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