Ask an HGV driver which routine manoeuvre generates the most near-misses and the honest answer is usually not reversing - it is the urban roundabout and the left turn at lights. Junctions concentrate every hazard a large vehicle faces: restricted visibility, long swept paths, cyclists appearing in the nearside blind spot, and other drivers making optimistic assumptions about what a truck can do. The Highway Code’s junction and roundabout rules are short; applying them at fifteen metres long is a craft.
The Code’s approach discipline is the foundation: take notice and act on all the information available - traffic signs, traffic lights and lane markings directing you into the correct lane. For a large vehicle that instruction has a practical edge. Lane changes close to a roundabout are slow and needy; a truck that arrives in the wrong lane often cannot correct without bullying. Get the lane early, signal early, and if the lane is wrong, take the wrong exit rather than carve across. A driver who goes around again has lost two minutes; a driver who forces the correction may lose the operator’s licence record.
When reaching a roundabout, the Code tells drivers to check whether road markings allow entry without giving way, but still look right before joining - and to watch out for all other road users already on the roundabout, being aware they may not be signalling correctly or at all. That last clause deserves emphasis in the cab: plan as if nobody else’s indicator means anything. A car signalling right may still go straight on, directly across the path your trailer needs.
A long vehicle may need to straddle or approach from lanes that confuse following traffic - swinging right before a left turn, or taking a central position to keep the trailer off the kerb. The Code’s signalling rules exist precisely to make unusual positioning legible: signal in good time, keep the signal consistent with what you are actually doing, and cancel it promptly. An indicator left running through a roundabout is not a triviality; it is false information that other road users act on.
Positioning discipline runs the other way too. Sitting fully left to “keep out of the way” while intending a right or straight-ahead path invites cars to fill the space on your right - inside the arc your rear wheels will cut. Take the lane your manoeuvre actually needs, signal it, and hold it.
The Code’s newer rules address the most lethal pattern directly. When turning left at a junction, do not cut across cyclists going ahead - including those using cycle lanes and cycle tracks. If you are following a cyclist toward a roundabout or junction where you intend to turn left, stay behind. The same applies to horse riders and horse-drawn vehicles.
Operationally this inverts an old habit. The driver who accelerates past the cyclist to “get ahead before the turn” is manufacturing a left-hook: the cyclist continues straight into the nearside blind zone exactly as the trailer cuts across. The compliant pattern is slower and simpler: arrive behind, stay behind, turn behind. At signalled junctions with advance stop lines, the cycle box ahead is not truck space - stopping in it pushes you into exactly the conflict the layout exists to prevent.
Mirrors and cameras help, but the procedural rule is stronger than any equipment: if a cyclist was visible before the junction, assume they are alongside until proven otherwise.
The rule is absolute: you MUST NOT enter a box junction until your exit road or lane is clear - except that you may enter and wait when turning right, stopped only by oncoming traffic or other right-turners. At signalled roundabouts there is no exception at all: do not enter the box unless you can cross it completely without stopping.
For a long vehicle this is a length calculation, not a hope. An artic that enters a box when the far side can take the cab but not the trailer has blocked the junction for everyone and committed an offence in camera-enforced areas. The professional habit is to count your own length against the space beyond the box before the front axle crosses the line - and to accept the horn from behind as the price of not blocking.
Junction craft belongs in the same places as the rest of the compliance system: route risk assessments that flag tight roundabouts and signalised left turns, driver briefings on the cyclist rules, and telematics review of harsh events at junctions. The Code’s expectations are stable and public; the operator’s job is making sure the driver’s habits match them on the wet Tuesday when nobody is watching.