Roundabouts

[Arnfinn Madsen]

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Do people in Europe handle those giant ones any better? maybe there aren't that many that are eight lanes across, I don't know.

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Well obviously I don't know how people in the US handle them, you get a few idiots here but generally people are ok. I'm only talking about London though, I have pretty much no experience driving anywhere else.

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In London and the rest of UK you have all those idiots who drive through them clockwise [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img].

[rusellmj]

WTF is a roundabout?

[Macdaddy Warsaw]

A traffic circle or a rotary.

[Blarg]

If I understand how roundabouts work correctly, they seem inherently quicker. At traffic lights there is always the possibility to have cars backed up at this side or that while there are no cars at all to go through the other way. So non-productivity is pretty much built into the system. Traffic lights are also sometimes very badly timed one to the next, so a car can't travel at speed even as long as a block. There are a million ways for traffic lights to be wasteful even if everyone were a perfect driver.

I think roundabouts might be at their best where people are known to be a little more courteous, just a guess. For instance, in Los Angeles, most people are horrible drivers, reflecting the general egotism and aggressive obliviousness of the place, and if we were to switch to all roundabouts tomorrow, there would be a huge rough adaptation as people began to actually pay attention to their driving and not do it purely mechanically and absent-mindedly. Letting people in your lane is regarded as a dangerous and humiliating admission of inferiority in Los Angeles, so the cooperation to keep a roundabout from completely gumming up would probably rare at first. I can picture the annual freeway shooting season turning from an occasional pleasant pastime into something truly worrisome.

[daveymck]

They can be quick and efficient but if traffic comes more from a certain direction then there can be huge build ups of traffic at the less busier entrances, generally in these cases they add part time traffic lights which often make the queues big at all of them [img]/images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img].

The more bizarre thing for me in the states was turning right through a red light if you did that over here (but turning left) you would get a ticket but I thought it was a good idea.

[fluxrad]

Roundabouts are becoming more popular in the states because they're safer. IIRC, the rationale is that you have more accidents at roundabouts, but the accidents that happen are:

1. At lower speed.
2. Not head-on or perpindicular to the direction of travel.

So there are significantly fewer injuries caused by accidents in roundabouts.

In my own experience, I really like roundabouts provided people know how to use 'em. Once roundabout etiquitte catches on here I think you'll start to see them all over.

[Dan Rutter]

They built one on a semi-busy street about 1/2 a mile away from my house. I do not like it. I think that some of the village council people thought it would be a neat thing to do, since no other city in the area has one. It also makes crossing it harder while walking, and it is located in a major area for kids walking to school.

In the winter some lady ended up crashing her car, because it had snowed out and before the plow came she was driving. Well, the roundabout was still covered and she ended up driving right on top of the roundabout, and did not follow the circular path. I do not know how she did not see the yield signs, or anything, but it happened. When I was driving past it they were digging her out.

[astroglide]

http://www.dot.wisconsin.gov/safety/...bout-works.htm

i've never heard of them before. seems like you can't go replacing stoplights with them due to how much space they take, maybe it's cool for new installations though.

[Yeti]

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I think it would be nice if there were uniform rules for navigating traffic circles. Some places, you yield to traffic in the circle and some you yield to traffic entering the circle. [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

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Really?

[fluxrad]

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I think it would be nice if there were uniform rules for navigating traffic circles. Some places, you yield to traffic in the circle and some you yield to traffic entering the circle. [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

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Really?

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Isn't this essentially the same thing? My understanding is you basically should yield to any car that could hit you.