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Posted on 06/02/2021 2:57:39 AM PDT by Kaslin
I hate waiting at traffic lights.
There's a solution: traffic circles, or roundabouts.
Traffic circles terrified me when I first confronted them in Europe. A movie, National Lampoon?s European Vacation, captured my experience when it portrayed Chevy Chase driving in London, unable to exit a rotary all day.
Besides being hard to navigate, I also assumed roundabouts cause problems, but a Freakanomics podcast woke me to their advantages. Roundabouts are a reason Britain?s rate of traffic deaths is less than half the U.S.'s.
We've converted almost all of our traffic lights to roundabouts because we save lives,? says the mayor of Carmel, Indiana, Jim Brainard. His little town now has 133 roundabouts.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison study confirmed that roundabouts save lives. Roundabouts increased crashes a bit, but deaths and injuries dropped by 38 percent.
It's because of the angle of the cars, says Brainard. Instead of a T-bone, you got a sideswipe?
Roundabouts also slow cars down a little, giving drivers more time to react.
That makes it seem like it'll take longer for cars to get through intersections, I say to Brainard.
It really doesn't, he responds. A roundabout moves 50 percent more traffic than a traffic light.
More than a four-way stop sign intersection, too, according to a test ran by the TV show Mythbusters.
Roundabouts are also better for the environment. You never come to a complete stop, Brainard points out. Tremendous amounts of fuel are saved.
Indianapolis realtor Jason Compton says roundabouts even increase the value of homes ?because they just flat out look better (by adding) more green space.
Sometimes communities put artwork in the middle.
Bottom line: Roundabouts are safer, cost less, move more traffic and are better for the environment.
Yet, most Americans still say, I don?t want these things. I tell Brainard. They're confusing. I'm more likely to have an accident!
Well, it takes public education, he responds. Chevy Chase didn't do us any favors.?
Brainard points out that Chase was stuck in a large rotary, not a roundabout. Some traffic circles and rotaries have many lanes. The one by Paris? Arc De Triomphe connects 12 roads!
Those are dangerous, says Brainard. That's not what we're building. Modern roundabouts are small; the smaller they are, the safer they become. They're very different.
Europe learned that lesson. European countries are building lots of small roundabouts.
America is way behind, I tell Brainard.
America is catching up, he replies. When I started, we probably had under a couple of hundred in the United States. Today, we're pushing five or six thousand.
That's progress.
Still, his little town, with just 97,000 residents, has 2 percent of all the roundabouts in America.
Yes
As long as you stay Close To The Edge.
Sure, it starts with roundabouts, but the next thing you know we’re using the metric system. It’s a slippery slope. My family left Europe for a reason.
Just like iced coffee.
until you get behind the moron who stops, even though there is not another car in sight!
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I hate them...Sterling Heights cops say the highest rate of accidents is at the roundabout located on Van Dyke north of 18 1/2 mile......It’s ok tho, they’re just accidents, nobody gets killed. /s
roundabouts are for the aggressive, and definitely not for the timid!
we have a small one on our residential street. Its ok enough but there is a learning curve to make it work as intended.
Some folks just don’t get it...like a 4-way stop sign.
I’m in Middle Tennessee and they have put a few round about in the new subdivisions. I love roundabouts being I spent a short time in England in the Air Force during the cold war. Another good thing about roundabouts is that if you have a vehicle that is prone to be on the boarder line of overheating your more apt to not have it overheat in an area with roundabouts vs stop lights being most of the time the your vehicle is moving getting air flow across the radiator. I live in Murfreesboro, Tennessee were the traffic is horrendous almost all the time during the day, and very terrible during rush hour, alot of stop lights you have to wait through two cycles before you get through, it really gets old. Roundabouts in this area would really help out a lot but it would really be expensive to put them in, and that is not going to happen. anyway if you don’t like traffic don’t move to the Nashville/Middle Tennessee area with all the various bedroom communities/cities you will hate it.
I know that one. I don’t know what they were thinking.
As far as I know we have no round abouts in my town, but if I am not mistaken there is one at
Fort Campbell, Ky in the housing area on the Ky side.
“Roundabouts are also better for the environment. You never come to a complete stop, Brainard points out”
I saw this traffic modelling video the other day about a humble cross roads which becomes a grade-separated clover-leaf or some such.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yITr127KZtQ
In Michigan: Too many crashes in 3-lane roundabout near Brighton trigger changes
https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2018/01/11_million_approved_to_limit_c.html
I have no idea without looking it up how many yards, or feet are in a Mile. I do know that a foot is 12 inches, or 30 centimeter (cm)
BTW, I doubt very much that was the reason your ancestors left Europe.
And Down by the River?
The article appears to imply that the smaller ones are better, so on that note, large intersections between 6 or 8 lane boulevards are right out for conversion.
And whoever designed that thing should probably be sent home with a box of crayons.
where is it??
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