MANY road users must have been feeling particularly smug with themselves this week as they travelled along Atherleigh Way.

The Twist Lane junction at Leigh has long been a talking point, nay, a danger zone, with accidents just seemingly waiting to happen.

The filtering of one lane in to three on the approach from the Atherton direction was often criticised by road users and we can also remember posing the question of whether there was really enough room for such a confluence.

The authoritative reply, we seem to recall, was that the widths all came within statutory highways specifications.

Our personal opinion was that if that really was the case, then somebody's tape measure ought to be recalibrated.

But this week we see new white lines and lo and behold, the roundabout approach route is cut down to two lanes and a cycleway. Amazingly, there now looks just enough room for a narrow handlebar push bike and a couple of cars to negotiate the carriageway side by side.

How the heck did we ever manage to filter alongside a juggernaut which had another vehicle on its outside?

But there is just one thing still puzzling people -- as we are told it did the Manchester taxi driver who was dropping off his fare, a once leading local civil servant -- where do the cyclists go when they get to the end of the cycleway?