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.
Lighting is a big deal.
So is signage.
They don’t make civil engineers like they used to.
Great intro to this one...
Yes,
and they are not for the Fragile.
They just need to take out that center thing so you can go straight through.
Several years ago they put traffic circles on several of the old, wide residential streets near downtown Waco to try to slow traffic. They had to go back and install things in the middle to stop Red Necks from just driving over and through them :)
C’mon man, doing 60 through a roundabout is part of the challenge.
but no pretty nurses selling poppies from a tray
Roundabouts are great for learning how to drift.
***”Roundabouts” are only one lane wide.***
We have lots of two-lane roundabouts, which I like very much when I’m going straight or to the right. Everyone here goes into the left lane for some reason, even if going straight, so I get to jump ahead of them in the right lane.
I took a cab in Rome a few times. Tony was fu—ing crazy on the roundabouts. Riding in the back of a Roman cab is not for the feint of heart......
Ya lol... I watch them alright!! And I find myself in conversation with myself more often than not over them!!
I’ll take roundabouts over 4 way stops any day!!
Bttt!
They are truly faster if you have smart people... Hold on... Let me rephrase... If you have normal thinking people in the vicinity. Unfortunately that is rarely the case!!
There's nothing wrong with a metric system for some measurements. Our country was the first to implement it and were smart enough to keep it to our money.
Metric works great with multiplication by 10 but doesn't work well with division or doubling.
Metric doesn't work with will measurements of 12 which divides by 1, 2, 3, 4, or 6. (Note 12" to a foot, 144 to a gross).
Metric doesn't work well with doubling; 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, etc. (Note 16 oz. to a pound, 32 oz. to a quart). It's especially found in computer processor speeds and operating systems; 8 bit, 16 bit, 32 bit, 64 bit, etc.
There are four way stop sign intersection that run like a clock when the drivers are all competent.
The real problems are the drivers who are too stupid, too timid, or too aggressive.
There is nothing more aggravating than a stupid/passive driver “kindly” relinquishing their right of way.
It used to tick me off, but except for inches, the whole thing is easier once you bother to think about it. There are some common references:
A meter is a little longer than a yard.
A kilometer is a little more than 1000 yards (10 football fields). So in field and track, a mile is measured in yards: 440 = 1/4 mile, 880 = 1/2 mile etc.
Water being the standard....A liter is about a quart. (two pints). Just like a fluid ounce of water weighs an ounce (a pint's a pound the world around)....a milliliter weighs one gram....hence a liter (1000 ml) of water weighs one kilogram (1000 grams).
Everything in metric is 1/10th or 10 times something...no whacked out multipliers like you said.
Those are rotaries....much easier to crash. Roundabouts are only one lane wide.
You never come to a complete stop ????? He doesn’t follow the cars I do.
As long as they are single lane.
Double lane ones are DANGEROUS!
And then, when ya got 5 roads leading into a small, two lane roundabout, and the brilliant engineers decide to close one of the lanes for a portion of the arc...
https://www.google.com/maps/@39.98809,-85.91915,601m/data=!3m1!1e3
(admittedly, this is the next-door town of Fishers: a definite Carmel_Wannabe!)
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