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.
As a veteran of roundabouts (we call them “Rotaries” in the People’s Republic of Marxachusetts), I BEG TO DIFFER!!!!!
Conservatives eschew change.
taking up the metric system is change
Conservatives continue to use the Anglo system
We were required to use metric dimensions on a contract we had. There was lots of grumbling. I collected all the Anglo tapes and provided metric tapes. Some brilliant soul found a metric anglo tape. After a while, they realized metrics were really not all that bad.
I use metric measurements mostly. I can think in millimeters
A problems I see here is that some don’t understand how to use them.
In my area, issues arise when someone tries to use the outside lane to pass e.g. is a four way two lane round about the outside lane is for turning on the next immediate street, while the inside lane is used to go further or straight on.
Well, I can see what their problem is - they’re all driving on the wrong side of the road!
We have some in Greenfield that look like a DOT truck, loaded with signs, crashed there!
Street view® THIS dandy!
I nearly do: at the ones with a very small rounded curb.
A little bump is a lot easier to take than wrenching the steering wheel around!
Most people I know hate roundabouts. I love then.
I hate to stop. Roundabouts are like doing a rolling California stop at every intersection. Half the time there is nobody else in the roundabout, so it is great not having to stop, like I have to at every empty arterial stop sign.
It takes some getting used to when traffic is in the roundabout, but I still love how I don’t have to stop. Works for me, but most people hate them.
God is a civil engineer. Who else would put a recreation area right in the middle of a waste disposal zone?
😱
Yes, smaller is better. 2 lanes max. I don’t think there should be any roundabouts 3 lanes or more. If you have 3 lanes or more, just put in a traffic signal.
I avoid them like the plague.
NASA lost a $125 million Mars orbiter in 1999 because a Lockheed Martin engineering team used English units of measurement instead of metric.
It’s what you learn first.
Either is ok if you use only it, but trying to reform your thinking pattern IS tough!
For me; I’d give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
I see what you did here!
Oh, mi gosh. I hate those people. They get there on the cross road at the same time to my right. They have the right of way, and then sit there waiting for me to go through. ARRRRRGGGHHH!!!
I’m the old coot in these circles.
But I’m also the AGGRESSIVE coot!
Watch out, Buster!!
Go get ‘em!
And there lies the problem. About ten years ago, the State constructed three successive traffic circles on a one-mile stretch of road that used to take 10 minutes to drive with a stop light at each intersection. I drive the road several times a day, and I have seen the same morons year-after-year come to a complete stop when they have the right-of-way or even worse, when there are no other car entering the circle. And every time, I yell, "Its not a f'n stop sign."
With that said, the traffic circles "calm" the flow of traffic, so that the ten minute drive with traffic lights now takes two minutes, and we no longer have a-hole drivers who think that red lights are optional.
I have also driven all over Scotland and Ireland, where traffic circles are the norm, and they can range from a small, painted circle at the village center with three or four entry points, to multi-ring circles with four or many more points of entry. They do work well to keep traffic moving, particularly since the locals grew up with traffic circles and know how to drive them.
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