I agree, it's a very poor design, likely dating from an era when high speed was a big noisy horse drawn carriage. The proper engineering solution to this is to

I agree, it's a very poor design, likely dating from an era when high speed was a big noisy horse drawn carriage. The proper engineering solution to this is to have an angled turn-off on to a side road (either perpendicular or parallel) which /is/ limited to a "safe residential speed".