I would gladly drive on the left provided that the clutch is on the right and the petrol on the left with the shift in the middle left, but only as long as I am also upside down. All the bike advocates in my town want roundabouts, the recalcitrant car drivers hate them.
The only issue I had was making turns. In Ireland, most of the time, for whatever reasons, we made turns so rarely that I was able to just focus and always wind up in the left lane after completing the turn.
In Australia, I had more trouble, maybe because we were deep in Kakadu, there were no landmarks. Fortunately, my friend from London was with me, and whenever I finished a turn in the right lane-- which was 73% of the time-- he'd just whack me on the shoulder.
At first, he'd say, "Left lane!" but I chose the right lane so frequently that it was easier for him to just hit me so he didn't have to break the flow of conversation.
Interesting comment about the roundabouts. They are not welcome here from a cyclists point of view. They are quite dangerous for a couple of rasons: motor vehicle operators like to fail to give away to vehicles in the roundabout (bicycles are vehicles) so near misses and worse are quite common and secondly there seems to be a belief that as a motor vehicle operator you must get to the roundabout first only to slow the person riding a bicycle down because they are faster. Claiming the lane does not seem to have much effect on the need to be first.
The third issue is dual lane roundabouts where bicycle riders continuing around the roundabout have to give way to vehicle on the inside lane exiting the roundabout while the rider is continuing. Not fun at all.
RACWA (Motorists organisaton) has a
pretty good explainer on roundabouts.
I have mixed feelings about them... meaning some roundabouts seem easy, others are way more difficult, and that's probably not a good thing.
I was REALLY proud of myself in Portugal, when I landed in Lisbon at 5:00 in the morning and drove to my hotel in Portimao (about 3 hours) through about a dozen roundabouts and didn't make a single wrong turn.
However, this gave me a false sense of confidence. Around town, and on my return trip, I often got trapped on the inside-- I really tried to do the right thing and dive for the inner lane if I was going past 12:00-- or couldn't get to the inside and locals honked at me... though very gently, because it was Portugal, after all, and people are amazingly cool there.
They installed a roundabout in my neighborhood at a place where we didn't even have a stop sign in 1997-- and didn't need one then, either. I was outraged, and was sure it would result in more accidents. However, I have to admit, it has decreased stress generally at that intersection, though only 10-15%.
