From reading your post, you might be getting a little confused between positioning and priority. At (probably) 99.9% of Roundabouts, a driver waiting to enter a roundabout should give way to traffic from his/her immeditate right. This means that you need to look at whether a driver entering the roundabout would cause a driver approaching from the right to change speed and/or direction. If it is a fairly small circle then almost any car on the roundabout that's not ahead of you, but is signalling right, could be impeded by a vehicle joining the R/B. On a much bigger one it's quite possible the car from your right could well be 50 or 60 yards away so there's less chance of impeding it.
As for positioning, the rules and guidelines as published in The Highway Code or Driving Manual have been around for a while and as such apply to the kind of rounabout we've had for donkeys' years and is in the form of a Celtic Cross with entry roads at 6, 9, 12 and 3 o'clock. In that case, if you are approaching at 6 and exiting at 9 or 12, as a general rule approach in the left hand lane. If exiting at 9, then approach in the right hand lane. The alternative position would be to approach in the right hand lane if you are exiting at 12 and there is a) a right hand lane you can use on exit, and there is an advantage in terms of making progress. In other words, if the exit from the roundabout is only one lane wide, it may be ill-advised to take the right hand approach as you may have nowhere to go.
Nowadays there are quite a few different layouts of roundabouts, but you can still use the basic template as a guide. Another way to look at it would be to say that, in general, if the exit you want is at 12 o'clock or less, take the left hand lane on approach. If it is after 12, approach in the right hand lane. Of course you could always put in a 3rd approach lane and another couple of exits into the mix and see if everybody can work it out.
Alas, that is somthing that is very unlikely. In the late '80s/late '90s, I was working out of BSM in Stockport and for half the pupils in my area, reaching the Peak District was fairly easy and we'd go up there on regular occasions towards the end of their course, including the Cat & Fiddle down to Macclesfield. Closer to Central Manchester it becomes impractical as it can take 45 minutes to get there, 45 minutes back and only 30 minutes, half of which is spent behind a HGV or caravan. The official DSA guidelines advocate the "gears for going, brakes for slowing" theory, and I have to say that I subscribe to that. However, ADIs get very little chance to take their pupils anywhere but the general area of the Test Centre. This is mainly because those paying for the lessons, especially if it's the Parents, often come up with the mantra that "they only start to learn to drive when they pass the test." Which is the biggest load of crap ever.
At the moment I am teaching the son of one of my work colleagues and I'm doing it just for the cost of fuel, so there is no financial pressure. As a result, we've been out to Macclesfield, up to Buxton and all over Cheshire. He's learnt about approach position, racing lines, late apexes, understeer, lift-off oversteer and just about anything I can think of to stand him in good stead when he leaves the confines of the Greater Manchester conurbation. That means we are getting near 60 hours of lessons. He's good, in fact I think it's fair to say he's very good. But, he's very definitely the exception to the rule.
Using the brakes to slow down and then take the appropriate gear for the speed makes sense in town, and as that is where the pupil will take his test, that's what the syllabus demands. When you were doing your Pharmacy Degree, I would be surprised if you covered a lot of ground when it came to treating Black Widow bites or the correct medication for Beri-beri or Sleeping Sickness brought on by Tse-Tse Fly bites, not to mention the correct drugs to administer for Cholera. The reason would probably be that there isn't a high incidence of these conditions in West Cumbria. That is also the case when the DSA looks at what needs to be taught for a Driving Test.
In the past, like when I took my test, we were taught to use the gears to slow down because most cars had drum brakes that were prone to fade even in town, especially as they had no servo and it wasn't unusual to find the brake pedal going right to the floor. Not a very pleasant feeling I assure you. Using engine braking and the gears to lose speed was important and meant you could use the brakes only for the last bit of retardation. The problem is that for various reasons, new drivers don't have the knowledge to adapt their techniques to different situations which is probably why some of them have problems.
Having said that, I've taken a Fiesta 1.25 Ghia and a Focus 1.6 Zetec with 3 and 4 occupants respectively to Italy via Haute Savoir. Using the mountain roads around Annecy and Castelline-in- Chianti quite quickly didn't produce any fade, so the Lake District shouldn't provide much of a problem except for older cars. I think it's just as likely crashes in your area are as much down to straight forward bad driving, often encouraged by the media; think Gone in 60 Seconds, The Fast and the Furious in both film and computer game formats, not to mention Jeremy Clarkson or Tiff Needel as it is due to inappropriate use of the brakes.
Want to cure the problem? Lobby your MP and the Minister for Transport to introduce a 2-Tier licence system that limits new drivers to low powered cars and staying within a relatively small radius of their home address. If a driver wants to drive a more powerful car or travel further afield or on Motorways he or she will have to take some form of more advanced training followed by a longer test. Of course, for this to work all drivers will have to submit to a re-test every 5 years. Even those who've been driving for years!
